IPSE,  IPSA: 

IPSE,   IPSA.   IPSUM: 
WHICH? 

(The  Latiii  Various  Readings,  Genesis  iii.  15.) 

Controversial   Letters  in  answer  to  the  above  question,  and   in 

Vindication  of  the  Position  assigned  by  the  Catholic  Church 

to  tlie  Ever-Blessed  Mother  of  the  World's  Redeemer 

in  the  Divine  Economy  of  Man's  Salvation. 

IN    REPLY  TO 

The  Right  Reverend  Dr.  Kingdon,  Coadjutor  (Anglican)  Bishop 

of  Fredericton,  New  Brunswick,  and  "John  M.  Davenport, 

Priest  of   the    Mission   Church,"    Ritualist    Minister, 

St.  John,  New  Brunswick. 


BY 

RICHARD   F.    QUIGLEY,   LL.B., 

(Harvard  and  Boston  Universities),  Harristbr-at-Law,  St.  John,  New  Brunswick, 

Canada. 


"  Behold  from  henceforth  all  gener.ntions  shall  call  me  blessed.     For  He  that  is  mighly 
has  done  great  thing!>  to  me,  and  holy  is  His  name."— St.  Ll'Ke,  i.  48-49. 


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PREFACE. 


The-  occasion  of  writing  the  letters  here  republished,  suffi- 
ciently appears  from  the  "  Report "  of  Bishop  Kingdon's 
Lecture  and  the  letter  thereon  in  the  first  pages  of  this  volume, 
and  need  not  be  foreshadowed  in  an  introduction.  The  writer's 
motive,  indeed,  lay  deeper,  and  he  strikes  the  key-note  in 
these  words : 

"  Wliat  I  desiderate  in  Protestant  teachers  is  a  knowledge  of  the 
Catholic  doctrines  they  attack.  In  the  conscientious  discharge  of 
their  duties  from  their  standpoint,  they  may  feel  themselves  obliged 
to  point  out  errors  (so  called)  iu  the  doctrines  of  the  CathoHc 
Church.  Of  this  no  reasonable  man  can  complain,  but  for  heaven's 
sake,  let  them  firat  learn  exactly  what  these  doctrines  are.  We  will 
then  have  less  of  the  wild  figments  of  hysterical  imaginations  and 
pandemonium  caricatures  of  beliefs,  in  defence  of  which  the 
mightiest  intellects  that  ever  adorned  our  race  have  found  their 
highest  sphere,  ant!  of  which  genius  allied  with  sanctity  have  ever 
been  the  most  persuasive  and  enthusiastic  exponents. " 

Here  I  appeal  for  "  more  llghV  on  the  part  of  virtuous  and 
high-minded  Protestants.  I  would  excite  a  spirit  of  enquiry, 
create  a  distrust  of  impressions  mechanically  imbibed  in  youth, 
and  perpetuated  and  permanently  fixed  by  more  serious  studies 
on  the  same  lines.  I  would  force  back  the  honest  mind  U[)on  the 
sources  of  its  knowledge,  induce  it  to  reconsider  the  process  by 
which  its  religious  convictions  touching  Catholic  doctrine  were 
formed,  and,  \\nth  a  more  matured  knowledge  of  the  conclu- 
sion, to  re-investigate  the  preniises  on  which  it  is  grounded. 
The  Catholic  Church,  I  delight  to  proclaim,  has  nothing  to 
fear  from  the  closest  and  most  minute  investigation.  It  is 
ignorance  which  is  the  great  Anti-Christ ;  and  sincere  inquiry 
and  honest  research  are  the  only  antidote.  These  we  cease- 
lessly challenge — yet,  for  the  most  part,  in  vain.  Why,  we- 
Catholics  ask  again  and  again,  are  we  to  be  insulted  and  slan- 

(8) 


4  Pbeface. 

dered,  calumniated  and  taunted,  day  after  day,  year  after  year, 
with  doctrines  which  we  iiave  a  thousand  times  formally  and 
distinctly  repudiated '{  Why  are  the  insults,  slanders,  calumnies, 
and  taunts  repeated  without  even  an  allusion  to  the  defence? 

I  shall  have  done  all  that  I  proposed  if  I  have  succeeded 
in  satisfying  thoughtful  and  fair-minded  Protestants  that 
the  Catholic  religion  is  very  far  different  from  the  absurd 
and  revolting  caricature  so  long  held  up  to  their  abhorrence 
and  execration,  —  if  I  havo  not  failed  to  show  that  the 
religion  against  which  so  mu'iy  of  their  teachers  and  writers 
inveigh  under  the  name  of  the  Catholic  religion,  is  a  religion 
which  Catholics  themselves  would  detest  most  cordially — if 
such  a  religion  really  existed. 

These  letters,  I  need  hardly  say,  were  not  designed  to  appear 
In  a  collective  form.  They  are  now,  however,  reproduced  out 
of  regard  to  the  wishes,  perseveringly  urged,  of  known  and 
unknown  readers,  Protestant  and  Catholic,  who  professed  to 
have  received  them  M-ith  much  interest.  They  are  repul)lished, 
too,  as  originally  issued,  excepting  a  few  verbal  corrections  and 
the  addition  of  a  few  lines  at  the  end  of  Letter  XII.,  which  I 
have  enclosed  in  [  ],  and  which  slipped  out  in  the  Imrry  of 
preparing  the  printer's  MS.  of  that  letter.  I  have,  also,  here 
and  there  throughout  the  volume,  added  postscripts,  and  a  few 
notes,  both  as  references  and  in  further  proof  of  the  positions 
taken  in  the  text.  The  more  elaborate  notes  which  I  had  in- 
tended to  make,  would  but  distract  the  general  reader,  and  the 
learned  in  such  matters  do  not  need  them. 

The  volume  is  made  up  of  four  parts,  namely  :  the  Prelimi- 
nary  Letters,  liesunu',  Rejoinder,  and  Itebutter.  The  lirst  ia 
intended  to  give  the  reader  a  general  conspectus  of  the  origin 
and  progress  of  the  discussion,  and  of  the  initial  attitude  of  my 
opponents ;  the  Tteaxum  is  a  consideration  of  the  arguments 
advanced  up  to  that  stage  in  the  debate ;  the  Rcjmmier  is  my 
I'ejily  t«  their  Stru'tuTes  on  the  Resume  ;  and  the  Rebutter  is 
my  answer  to  their  second  series  of  Strietv>re,<i.  I  can  assure 
the  reader  that  lie  will  get  from  these  letters  a  full  and  com- 
plete idea  of  the  whole  controversy  ;  for,  I  have  made  it  their 
€si)ecial  feature  to  set  out  in  my  opponents'  own  words  not 


Pkeface.  5 

only  their  strongest  positions,  but  every  semldance  of  argu- 
ment in  the  St/'/cturcft.  Indeed,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  sav.  tliat 
a  much  clearer  impression  can  be  gained  from  these  letters. 
alone  than  if  my  opponents' confused  and  illogical  jumble  were 
in  the  hands  of  the  reader — even  when  jnirged  of  the  <lisgrace- 
fid  blunders  for  which  they  had  repeatedly  to  apologize. 

In  discussing  such  toi)ics  as  have  engaged  us  in  this  contro- 
versy, I  had  rather  '''  bear  my  sword  hid  in  a  myrtle  branch '' 
and  keep  it  there,  than  make  a  merciless  onslaught  on  my  (ip- 
]ionents  and  scourge  them  ''  hip  and  thigh."'  But  the  Vicar, 
though  my  nominal  opponent  only,  has  not  allowed  me  to  act 
in  this  courteous  spirit.  The  combat  must  be  what  the  adver- 
sary makes  it.  In  his  very  first  letter  (the  third  preliminary), 
he  deliberately  surrendered  all  claims  to  j)articipate  in  the 
rights  of  controversial  chivalry.  By  the  insolence,  ignorance, 
stupidity,  and  malice  there  displayed,  he  forced  the  button  from 
off  my  foil,  and  obliged  me  to  thrust  my  weapon  home.  lie 
compelled  me  to  treat  him  as  a  knight  of  old  would  have  dealt 
with  a  churl  who  had  assailed  him  with  base,  ungentle  weapons. 
In  this  particular,  I  trust  to  the  camlor  and  "  sweet  reasonable- 
ness" of  my  opponents,  however  multitudinously  and  multi- 
fariously real,  ioY  a  hearty  and  whole-souled  appreciation  of 
my  good-will  in  their  regard. 

There  remains  that  I  should  say  a  word  on  the  matter  of 
these  letters.  The  construction  and  logical  order  of  the  dif- 
ferent parts  was  suppliecl  by  the  tactics  of  my  opponents ;  the 
substance  was  furnished  by  Catholic  and  Protestant  Biblical 
critics,  and  Catholic  theologians  of  tine  highest  authority.  Hue 
nndlque  gaza.  On  the  academic  (piestion  involved  in  the  dis- 
cussion, the  quotations  made  will  speak  for  themselves.  Here 
it  is  a  most  noteworthy  fact,  that  in  no  one  instance  did  my 
opponents  dare  to  dispute  them,  while  in  nearly  every  case  I 
have  turned  their  relevant  authorities  against  themselves,  and 
with  crushing  force.  But  what  is  more  remarkably  disgrace- 
ful :  they  passed  over  in  silence  citations  which  are  absolutely 
crucial,  and  everlastingly  definitive  of  the  questions  which,  in 
their  ignorance,  they  had  raised.  While  I  do  not  profess  to  be 
exhaustive  under  this  head,  I  can  assure  the  reader  lie  has  before 


6  Pbeface. 

him  the  results  of  some  labor  and  careful  research  among  many 
leanied  volumes.  But  I  have  not  grudged  it,  and  I  am  ref  reslied 
by  the  thought:  Et  haec  olhn  ineminiase juvabit. 

In  the  purely  theological  exposition  of  Catholic  doctrine,  I 
am  reminded  of,  and  desire  to  pay  homage  to  the  dictum  of 
the  old  philosopher :  Alienaa  aarcinas  adoro.  Here  my  occu- 
pation has  been  but  to  kneel  aud  pick  up  the  "gem(8)  of 
purest  ray  serene  "  from  the  writings  of  Cardinals  Wiseman, 
Newman,  Manning;  the  giant  Jesuits,  Fathers  Harper  aud 
Passaglia,  and  the  illustrious  Keviewers,  Doctors  Ward  and 
Brownson.  The  extent  of  my  indebtedness  to  them  will  be 
easily  recognized  by  students  familiar  with  their  works.  I 
have  made  the  very  freest  use  of  their  arguments  and  language, 
incorporating  them  with  my  own  on  occasions  impossible  to 
specify  in  detail.  This  is  especially  true  of  Father  Harper's, 
and  those  of  Doctor  Ward  in  the  DuUin  Review.  My  obli- 
gations to  other  Catholic  writers,  whether  in  Latin  or  in  Eng- 
lish, I  have  acknowledged,  each  in  its  proper  place,  so  far  as 
I  know  them.  I  will  make  mention  here,  too,  of  the  learned 
Nicholas'  work:  Tm  Yierge  Marie  iVapres  VEvangiU  et  da?is 
VEglise,  and  that  of  I'Abbe  Petitalot :  La  Vicrge  Mere  d''apres 
la  Theologie,  from  both  of  which  I  have  also  drawn.  Specific 
and  detailed  acknowledgment  of  my  obligations  to  learned 
Catholic  theologians  is,  however,  of  the  less  consequence  here, 
since  my  appeal  throughout  is  to  facts,  i  nd  to  reason  in  its 
legitimate,  and,  to  me,  imperative  actton  on  Christian  princi- 
ples admitted  and  professed  by  Protestants.  For  their  instruc- 
tion my  exposition  of  Catholic  doctrine,  on  the  points  in  dis- 
pute, is  written, — to  them  it  is  addressed.  I  pretend  to  no 
discovery,  no  invention.  My  aim  has  been  but  to  focalize  for 
the  general  reader  a  few  scintillations  of  what  the  faith,  and 
piety,  and  learning  of  some  of  the  brightest  intellects  and  the 
purest  hearts  among  the  children  of  the  Catholic  Church,  have 
handed  down  on  the  religious  topics  discussed  in  these  letters. 
If  my  readers  derive  from  their  perusal  any  profit  at  all  com- 
mensurate with  the  delight  I  experienced  in  preparing  them, 
I  will  feel  amply  rewarded  for  my  labor. 

H.  F.  Q. 

Feast  of  the  Assumption,  1890. 


PRELIMINARY  LETTERS. 


Extract  from  a  Report  in  the  St.  John  Globe,  November  23, 
1887,  of  a  Lecture  on  "  MISPRINTS,"  delivered  by  the  Right 
Reverend  Doctor  Kiugdon,  Coadjutor  Bishop  of  Fredericton, 
New  Brunswick: 

"Church  of  England  Instftute. 

"Rev.  Canon  Brigstocke  occupied  the  chair  in  Trinity  Church 
School-House  last  evening,  and  in  a  few  graceful  words  introduced 
the  Right  Rev.  Dr.  Kingdon  as  the  lecturer  of  the  evening.  Tlie 
subject  was  'Misprints,'  but  the  lecture  covered  more  than  the 
title  indicates,  for  it  abounded  in  illustrations  of  errors  of  all  kinds, 
having  their  origin  in  copying,  in  printing,  in  pronunciation,  and 
in  transposition,  and  in  changes  of  form  and  in  changes  of  sound. 

"Sometimes  the  substitution  of  one  letter  for  another 
made  a  vast  difference,  and  as  an  illustrat.'on  of  this  he  re- 
FERRED TO  THE  WORDS  IPSE  AND  IPSA,  THE  LATTER  WORD  IN  AN 
IMPORTANT  PASSAGE  IN  THE  DOUAY  (SIC)  BiBLE  BEING  THE  FOUNDA- 
TION OF  THE  DOGMA  OF  THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION " 

I.  • 

LETTER  FROM  MR.  QUIGLEY. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IPSUM. 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Glole  : 

Sir,— I  very  much  enjoyed  the  Right  Rev.  Dr.  Kingdon's 
lecture  on  "  Misprints,"  a  short  report  of  which  you  gave  last 
evening.  His  Lordship  made  a  strong  appeal  for  accuracy  and 
correctness,  and  yet,  by  a  strange  Nemesis,  grievously  erred  in 

(7) 


8  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

liis  illustration  of  their  iinportunce,  based  upon  the  words  ijm' 
and  ijjua,  and  liiti  statement  in  eonneetion  therewith.  Here, 
l)y  a  niis[)nut  of  tlie  letter 'v^' for  the  letter '<',"  said  his 
Lordship,  there  lamentably  resulted  that  thirty-three  years  aj^o 
the  Iloinan  Catholic  Church  was  led  to  j)romulgate  the  dogma 
of  tho  Innnaculate  Conception.  The  inference,  I  assume,  he 
intended  his  hearers  to  draw  was  that  the  alleged  foundation 
for  the  doctrine  being,  in  these  days  at  all  events,  a  clear  and 
confessed  mistake,  the  church  had  fallen  into  grave  docrrinal 
error  in  declaring  it  to  be  a  truth  of  the  Christian  religion.  I 
aim  to  report  the  Bishoj)  correctly,  though  oidy  substantially, 
and  in  the  criticism  I  propose  to  make  I  desire  to  avoid  the 
very  semblance  of  the  odium  tJieohnjicxim  and  to  treat  him 
with  the  utmost  respect  and  courtesy. 

Xow,  I  begin  by  saying  that  the  Bishop's  statement  is  not 
only  wholly  incorrect  and  baseless,  but  to  me  his  misapprehen- 
sion is  simply  ap]>alling.  The  case  for  a  mis])rint  even,  and 
quite  regardless  of  the  conse(|uence  deplored  by  him  as  result- 
ing from  it,  is  far  otherwise  than  that  stated  by  his  Lordship. 
The  discussion  raised  by  him  is  not  between  ipse  and  ijisa 
alone,  but  between  them  and  the  word  ijisuni.  Why  did  he 
not  so  put  it,  since  this  is  the  real  state  of  the  question  'i  To 
make  the  points  at  issue  perfectly  intelligible  I  will  here  set 
down  the  matter  of  tho  dispute,  viz.:  Genesis  iii.  15 — accord- 
ing to  the  different  versions.  Protestant  version  :  And  I  ivill 
j)>ti  enmity  hetweeii  thee  and  the  icoman,  and  between  t/ii/  seed 
and  her  seedj  w  shall  bruise  thy  head,  etc.'  Douay  version  : 
I  loilljptit  eninities  between  thee  and  the  ivmnan^and  thy  seed 
and  her  seed;  Siiv:  shall  crush  thy  head,  etc.;  The  Vulgate  : 
Inimicitias  ponam  inter  te  et  mulierem,  et  sevien  txmin  et 
semen  illius  ;  ipsa  conteret  cajnd  tuum,  etc.  This  whole  text 
has  been  called  by  the  early  writers  in  the  church  the  Pi'oto- 
Gospel,  for  it  contains  a  promise  of  the  future  Savior.  It  is, 
therefore,  to  Protestant  and  Catholic  alike  of  transcendent  im- 
portance and  very  comprehensive  application  ;  but  it  will  be 
observed  that  the  present  contention  is  over  the  Jirst  word  of 
the  second  clause  only :  "  It  shall  bruise  thy  head^''  etc.;  "  She 
shall  crush  thy  head,^''  etc.    The  Hebrew  text  from  which  both 


Pkeliminauy  Lettkus.  9 

troiislations  vltimaU'hj  come  is  accorilinf;  to  the  learned  Cardi- 
nal Hellarniiiie  aiulii^uous,  and  in  consefiuence  tlurc  dilTerent 
readings  prevailed  among  eeelesiastieal  writers  as  follows;  IrsK 
conteret  caput  tuv/n — II k  ( Christ)  shall  bruise  thy  head  ;  Ii'SA. 
conteret  caput  tuum — Shk  (the  woman,  the  I'lessed  Virgin, 
through  Christ  her  Seed)  shall  crush  tl.y  head  ;  Ii'sim  conteret 
cuput  tnnm — It  (her  seed  that  is  Christ),  shall  bruise  thy  head. 
AVhy,  then,  eontine  the  cjuestion  of  misprint  to  Ipnc  and  Ipsa 
and  ignore  ipmuu^  the  Protestant  reading,  which  itself  rejects 
■ipse  i  The  simple  truth  is  that  liia  Lordship's  theory  of  a  niis- 
jtrint  and  his  statement  thereanent  is  sheer  nonsense.  There 
is  absolutely  no  dirt'erence  ///  .soisr,  U)  the  Catholic  mind  at 
least,  between  these  three  readings.  The  learned  commenta- 
tor Cornelius  si  Lapide,  says  "all  are  true'' — omtiea  sunt  venv. 
The  Almighty  ])romises  that  the  triumph  over  Satan  is  to  be 
complete  and  his  power  broken  by  Christ,  who  is  the  seed  of 
the  woman.  The  Protestant  version  adopts  " ipsum " — "It," 
because  it  thinks  it  more  literally  in  accord  with  the  true  He- 
brew reading  and  that  ol'  some  of  the  ancient  fathers.  The 
Douay  version  "ipsa" — "she"  follows  the  Vulgsite,  which  is 
sanctioned  bv  almost  all  the  Latin  Fathers,  includine:  such 
names  as  St.  Augustine,  St.  Gregory,  St.  Ambrose,  St.  Ber- 
nard, Victor  and  Avitiis,  as  well  as  by  (the  Latin  translator  of) 
St.  Clwysostom,  Bede,  Alcuin,  and  many  others.  And  thus  it 
becomes  a  mere  quillet  of  verbal  criticism  !  So  much  for  the 
academic  aspect  of  the  question. 

And  now  what  becomes  of  the  Bishop's  assertion  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  is  founded  on  a  mis- 
print i  It  vanishes  into  thin  air.  Of  course  I  am  not  now 
discussing  the  truth  of  this  doctrine,  but  simply  correcting  an 
amazing  misconception.  Unfortunately  such  misconceptions 
are  too  common  among  our  Protestant  brethren  where  the 
honor  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  the  mother  of  Christ — the 
"  Woman !  above  all  women  glorified,  our  tainted  nature's 
solitary  boast,"  as  the  Protestant  Wordsworth  addresses  her — 
is  concerned.  And  while  Protestant  churches  will  resound 
with  the  praises  of  Sarah  and  Rebecca  .tnd  Rachel,  of  Miriam 
and  Ruth,  of  Esther  and  Judith  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  of 


10  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Elizabeth  and  Anna,  of  Magdalen  and  Martha  of  the  New,  the 
name  of  Mary,  the  mother  of  Christ,  is  uttered  with  bated 
breath  lest  the  sound  of  her  name  should  make  the  preacher 
liable  to  the  charge  of  superstition.  I  do  not  think  of  imput- 
ing such  views  to  his  lordship,  but  the  animus  of  Kemnitzius 
and  others  in  discussing  this  translation  in  another  connection  is 
born  of  such  ignorant  prejudice,  and  I  do  imagine  their  inter- 
pretations led  to  his  mistake.  Catholics  do  not  forget  the 
Blessed  Virgin's  own  prediction  of  that  honor  which  the 
church  in  all  ages  should  pay  to  her — "  all  generations  shall 
call  me  blessed," — Luke  i.  48 ;  and  we  believe  with  St. 
Epiphanius  that  "  it  is  no  less  criminal  to  vilify  the  holy  Vir- 
gin than  to  glorify  her  above  measure.''^  But  enough.  I  have 
tried  to  maku  the  matter  clear.  There  is  nothing  at  all  in  the 
Bishop's  point.  I,  as  a  Catholic,  have  no  more  interest  in  re- 
taining "  ipsa,"  "  SHE,"  in  the  text  than  he  has,  so  far  as  the 
Immaculate  Conception  is  concerned.  "Words  have  been  cor- 
rected in  the  Vulgate  since  the  Council  of  Trent  by  Popes 
Sixtus  V.  and  Clement  VIII.;  so,  if,  by  the  discovery  of  new 
MSS.  or  otherwise,  it  be  found  'at  "it"  or  "he,"  and  not 
"  SHE  "  is  the  true  reading  +^  .ction  will  no  doubt  be 

made.     But  the  sublime  docl  the  Immaculate  Concep- 

tion and  its  definition  will  not  be  affected  by  the  change,  be- 
cause it  is  not  dependent  upon  nor  founded  on  it.  It  will 
stand  forever  all  the  same,  and,  perhaps,  his  lordship  and 
others  who  now  grudgingly  "give  honor  where  honor  is  due" 
will  then  have  learned  to  say :  Dignare  me  laudare  te,  Virgo 
Sacrata :  Da  mihi  virtutem  contra  hostes  tuos. 

Respectfully  yours, 

R.  F.  QuiGLET. 

Ritchie's  Building,  ) 

Thursday,  Nov.  24th,  1887.  f 

[Mr.  Quigley  having  signed  his  letter,  no  letters  on  this  sub- 
ject will  be  published  unless  the  writers'  names  are  given. — 
Globe.] 


PKELDimABY  LeTTEBS.  11 

n. 

LETTER  FROM  REV.  MR.  CAMPBELL. 

The  Rectory,  Dobohesteb,  N.  B.,  Nov.  29. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe: 

Sib, — In  last  evening's  issue  Mr.  Quigley  quotes  three  Latin 
versioi.  -  of  Gen.  iii.  15.  I  have  a  Latin  version  of  the  whole 
Bible,  including  the  Apocrypha — but  vt^anting  the  title-page 
and  the  date — which  agrees  with  no  one  of  the  three  quoted.  I 
send  my  reading  to  you  merely  as  a  contribution  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  discussion.  On  the  main  argument  I  say  nothing 
in  this  communication  ;  for  it  may  be  fairly  assumed  that  his 
Lordship  will  make  Mr.  Quigley  a  fitting  reply. 

But  I  would  like  to  ask  whether  any  of  your  readers  have  a 
copy  of  the  same  version ;  and,  if  they  have,  whether  they  will 
kindly  state  what  version  it  is,  with  the  date  of  publication  ? 
The  verse  reads  thus :  "  Praeterea  inimicitiam  pono  inter  te  et 
mulierem  hanc  sirailiterq ;  inter  semen  tuum  et  semen  hujus ; 
hoc  conteret  tibi  caput,  tu  autera  conteres  huic  calcaneum." 

Yours  obediently, 

J.  Roy  Campbell. 


III. 
LETTER  FROM  MR.  DAVENPORT. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IPSTJM. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — Surely  Mr.  Quigley  is  not  correct  in  his  criticism  on 
Genesis  iii.  15.  He  asks  somewhat  indignantly  why  Bishop 
Kingdon,  in  his  lecture  did  not  put  the  real  state  of  the  ques- 
tion before  his  hearers,  and  tell  them  the  dispute  was  not  be- 
tween Ipse  and  Ipsa,  but  also  between  Ijpsum.    "Where  then  is 


12  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

to  be  found  a  Latin  version  of  the  Bible  with  Ipsum  in  this 
passage  ?  I  have  never  read  of  it  in  any  commentary.  Jerome's 
old  Vnlgate,  made  direct  from  the  Hebrew,  has  the  masculine 
Ipse — the  modern  Vnlgate  in  spite  of  this  has  Ipsa.  Where 
is  the  Ipsum\  Because  the  English  version  speaks  of  the 
"  Seed  of  the  woman  "  as  It.,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the 
neuter  occurs  in  the  Hebrew  original,  or  in  either  the  Greek 
or  Latin  versions  thereof.  It  is  not  true  that  in  speaking  of 
the  promised  offspring  of  the  woman  as  7i!,  the  English  trans- 
lators rejected  Ipse.,  as  Mr.  Quigley  says. 

The  ''academic  aspect  of  the  question,"  to  borrow  Mr. 
Quigley's  phrase,  stands  thus :  The  Hebrew  has  a  masculine 
pronoun  followed  by  a  masculine  verb  "  He  shall  bruise."  It 
is  true  that  if  the  pronoun  stood  alone  without  the  vowel-point- 
ing, as  in  the  old  style  of  writing  Hebrew,  it  could  not  be  told 
without  looking  at  the  verb  wJiat  was  its  gender.  About  the 
verb  (y'shuphcah),  however,  there  is  not  and  never  has  been  a 
doubt  because  it  begins  with  the  masculine  affix.  Therefore 
the  translators  of  the  modern  vnlgate  are  without  excuse  in 
adopting  a  feminine  translation  of  the  pronoun,  and  thus  doing 
violence  to  tlie  verb,  more  especially  as  they  had  the  grand  old 
vulgate  of  Jerome  before  their  eyes  to  keep  them  right.  So 
plain  is  the  Hebrew  here  that  the  Septuagint  translators  (who 
accomplished  their  task  three  centiiries  before  the  coming  of 
Christ),  while  adopting  a  neuter  word  sperma  for  "seed," 
nevertheless  use  a  masculine  pronoun  autot^  here  to  repre- 
sent it. 

Bishop  Kingdon's  statement,  therefore,  it  se  jms  to  me,  is  not 
as  Mr.  Quigley  says,  "  wholly  incorrect  and  baseless,"  even  if 
his  "  misapprehension  be  simply  appalling  "  to  Mr.  Quigley. 

I  confess  that  if  the  Bishop  asserted  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  yvn.?,  founded  on 
a  misprint,  it  was  too  bald  and  uncpialified  a  statement.  Many 
things  helped  to  stereotype  it  besides  this  error.  At  the  same 
time  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  this  mistranslation  has  been 
long  and  much  used  in  the  Roman  Church  for  the  'indue  ex- 
altation of  the  Holy  Virgin,  while  it  is  very  note\  rliy  that 
Pope  Pius  IX.,  when  promulgating  the  I>ogma  in  S.  Peter's 


Pbelimixaky  Letteks.  13 

at  Rome,  December  8,  1854,  alluded  for  its  defence  to  this 
very  text,  and,  moreover,  afterwards  set  up  a  memorial  column 
of  the  event  in  the  city,  on  the  top  of  which  stands  a  figure  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  (without  the  holy  child,  mark  you,  in  her  arms) 
trampling  the  serpent  under  foot.  This  representation  of  the 
bruising  of  the  serpent's  head  hy  the  woman^  everybody  knows 
has  been  for  years  and  still  is  very  common  among  Roman 
Catholics.  Therefore  **"  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the 
modern  vulgate  mistranslation  of  Genesis  iii.  15  has  largely 
helped  to  smooth  the  way  for  the  promulgation  of  the  Dogma 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin. 

There  is  one  other  point  in  Mr.  Quigley's  letter  I  cannot 
suffer  myself  to  pass  over  unnoticed.  In  my  opinion  he  would 
have  been  wiser  in  his  own  cause  had  he  been  less  satirical 
about  the  neglect  of  the  Holy  Virgin  by  Christians  outside  the 
Roman  Church.  Who  is  to  blame,  let  me  ask,  for  their  present 
attitude  towards  her?  Who  has  rendered  it  well-nigh  impos- 
sible for  them  to  yield  her  her  proper  place  and  dignity  as  chief 
of  saints  ?  None  other  than  the  Roman  Church  herself,  with  her 
exaggerated  and  too  often  idolatrous  devotions  offered  to  her. 

I  must  prove  such  a  serious  charge  as  this.  I  will  take  two 
well-known  l)ooks,  in  use  among  Roman  Catholics  of  all  lands. 
"  Liguori's  Glories  of  Mary,"  and  "  The  Raccolta."  The  first 
named  is  a  book  approved  by  the  highest  authorities  of  the 
Roman  Church,  and  formally  recommended  to  Anglo-Rouians 
by  Cardinals  Wiseman  and  Manning.  In  that  book  are  to  be 
found  such  instructions  as  these :  "  Mary  is  our  only  refuge, 
help  and  asylum."  "Often  we  shall  be  heard  more  quickly, 
and  be  thus  preserved,  if  we  have  recourse  to  Mary  and  call 
npon  her  name,  than  %oe  should  he  if  we  called  on  the  name  of 
Je^ns^  ouf  Saviour.''''  "  Many  things  are  asked  from  God  and 
are  not  granted  ;  they  are  asked  from  Mary  and  are  ubtained." 
"  At  the  command  of  the  Virgin  all  things  obey,  even  God." 
(Imperio  Virginia  omnia  famulantur,  etiam  Dens.) 

"  The  salvation  of  all  depends  on  their  being  favored  and 
protected  by  Mary.  He  who  is  protected  by  Mary  will  be 
saved ;  he  who  ia  not,  will  be  lost.  M'try  luis  only  to  siwak, 
and  her  Sou  executes  all."    (See  Littledalo,  p.  55.) 


li  Ipse,  1p8A,  Ipsum. 

In  the  second  book  mentioned  are  to  be  found  devotions  to 
the  Yirgin  in  keeping  with  these  impious  utterances. 

When  on  a  visit  to  Rome,  in  1880,  I  purchased  an  English 
copy  of  the  "  Raccolta,"  at  the  Propaganda,  in  order  to  test  the 
accuracy  of  Li ttlec' ale's  quotations.  The  "  Raccolta  "  is  a  popu- 
lar Roman  manual  of  indulgeuced  devotions.  My  copy  is 
dated,  "Woodstock  College,  Maryland,  1878.  About  130  out 
of  450  pages  are  devoted  directly  to  the  Virgin,  while  she  finds 
mention  in  nearly  all  the  devotions.  The  following  irnpicus 
acts  of  worship  and  prayer  are  taken  from  the  "Second 
Xovena  in  preparation  for  the  Feast  of  our  Lady's  Nativity,'* 
p.  275  (the  italics  are  mine) :  "  We  hail  t]\\.'e,  dear  child,  and 
we  humbly  worship  thy  most  hcly  body ;  we  venerate  thy 
sacred  swaddling  clothes  wherewith  they  bound  thee,  the  sacred 
cradle,"  &c. 

Prayer :  "  Most  lovely  child,  who  by  Thy  birth  has  com- 
forted the  world,  made  glad  the  heavens,  struck  terror  to  hell, 

brought  help  to  the  fallen,  &c We  pray  Thee  with  all 

fervent  love,  he  Thoxi  horn  again  in  spirit  in  our  souls^ 
through  Thy  most  holy  love ;  renew  our  fervor  in  Thy  service, 
rekindle  in  our  hearts  the  fire  of  Thy  love,  and  bid  all  virtues 
blossom  there,  which  may  cause  us  to  find  more  and  more 
favor  in  Thy  gracious  eyes.  Mary !  be  thou  Mary  to  us,  and 
may  we  feel  the  saving  power  of  Thy  sweetest  name.  Let  it 
ever  be  our  comfort  to  call  on  that  great  name  in  all  our 
troubles ;  let  it  be  our  hope  in  dangers,  our  shield  in  temp- 
tation, and  in  death  our  last  murmur." 

Herein  we  find  expressions  of  worship  and  supplication  such 
as  Christians  are  wont  to  present  only  to  God,  or  the  Incarnate 
Son,  or  the  Holy  Spirit.  We  could  not  say  more  at  the  cradle 
of  Jesus,  nor  could  we  pay  more  honor  to  the  Blessed  Paraclete 
Himself  than  to  beg  Him  to  "  rekindle  in  our  hearts  the  fire 
of  His  love." 

Now  this  book  has  on  its  title-page,  "  Published  by  order  of 
His  Holiness  Pope  Pius  IX.  Translation  authorized  and  ap- 
proved by  the  Sacred  Congregation  of  Holy  Indulgences"; 
while  in  the  preface  people  are  urged  to  use  this  book,  because 
then  they  may  feel  perfectly  assured  the  indulgonces  are  all  right. 


Preliminary  Letters.  15 

The  Eoman  Church,  therefore,  is  thoroughly  committed  to 
this  book  with  all  its  enormities. 

Surely  it  is  the  duty  of  all  lovers  of  "  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus," 
i.  e.,  all  true  Catholic  Christians,  to  come  out  of  a  church 
which  puts  its  imprimatur  upon  such  idolatrous  worship  as  this, 
and  it  ill  becomes  one  who  accepts  such  extravagances  to  chide 
those  who,  for  fear  of  them,  fall  short  of  their  duty. 

It  ought  to  be  remembered,  in  this  connection,  that  the 
Church  of  England  has  preserved  her  balance  well  under  the 
circumstances,  and  observes  four  feasts  yearly  in  honor  of  the 
Holy  Mother. 

Yours  faithfully, 

John  M.  Davenport, 

Priest  of  the  Mission  Church, 
Portland,  St.  John,  N.  B. 
November  28,  1887. 


IV. 

LETTER  FROM  MR.  QUIGLEY. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe: 

Sir, — Two  communications  have  appeared  in  your  columns 
anent  mine  of  Monday  last,  from  writers  with  whom  I  had  no 
quarrel.  One  purports  to  be  an  answer  and  a  defense  (?)  of 
Bishop  Kingdon.  Surely  the  Bishop  must  feel — Non  tall 
auxilio!  Save  me  from  my  friends:  I  will  look  after  my 
enemies  myself ! 

"/i^  ynay  he  fairly  assvmed,''^  says  the  second  writer,  "that 
His  Lordship  will  make  ....  aftting  reply."  1  think  so 
too.  The  Bishop,  deservedly  no  doubt,  gets  credit  for  "  pluck  " 
in  more  departments  than  one.  He  is  also  a  man  of  honor, 
and  recalling  his  own  thought — '^  hnmanum  est  errare — to  err 
is  human  " — often  expressed  during  his  lecture,  will  not,  I 


^^  Ii'SE,  Ipsa,  Ipsiru. 

think,  hesitate  to  acknowledge  bis  kinship  with  our  common 
humamtj,  by  making  an  amende  hmioraUe  for  Lis  error  touch- 
ing tiie  old  church  to  which  he  owes  at  least  fau-  plaj. 

Respectfully  jours, 

r>v  u-  >    T,    -1  ,•  ^-  ^-  QUIGLEY. 

Ritchie's  Building, 

Friday  Morning,  Dec.  2d,  '87. 


Y. 
LETTER  FROM  MR.  DAYENPORT. 

MR.  QUIGLEy's  criticisms  ON  BISHOP  KINGDOn's  LECTURE. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe: 

Sir,— It  is  as  I  suspected  when  I  criticised  hypothetically 
what  was  attributed  to  Bishop  Kingdon  by  Mr.  Quigley.  The 
Bishop  has  l)een  misrepresented. 

Bishop  Kingdon   has  not  seen  Mr.  Quigley's  letter,  but  he 
lias  kmdly  taken  the  trouble  to  give  me  the  substance  of  his 
own  remarks  and  also  some  quotations  from  his  lecture    With 
regard  to  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  texts  of  Gen.  iii.  15,  he  went 
over  much  the  same  ground  as  myself  in  my  strictures  on  Mr. 
<Hinigley.     He  proved  also  from  several  of  the  chief  Fathers 
of  the  Church  that  it  was  far  from  their  mind  to  attribute  the 
bruising  of  the  Serpent's  head  to  the  Yirgin  ;  and  simply  said 
that  the  mistake  ipsa  for  ipse  had  acquired  a  tremendous  im- 
portance from  being  quoted  in  the  promulgation  of  the  dogma 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception  by  Pius  IX.'     He  neither  Wd 
nor  implied  that  "  the  dogma  was  founded  on  a  misprint."     I 

'  It  is  my  duty  to  say  that  what  is  here  attributed  to  Bishop  King- 
don IS  utterly  untrue.  He  attempted  nothing  of  the  kind.  The 
writer,  later  on  in  the  discussion,  swaUows  his  own  falsehood  and 
does  his  httle  best  to  prove  that  "  the  dogma  was  founded  on  a  mi;s- 
P"°*-  R  F.  Q. 


Preliminaby  Letters.  17 

hope,  therefore,  now  Mr.  Quigley  has  been  proved  in  error  on 
every  point,  he  will  see  his  way  to  act  upon  his  own  recom- 
mendation which  appeared  in  your  to-day's  issue.  Mr.  Quigley 
seems  somewhat  indignant  that  any  one  should  notice  his  let- 
ters besides  the  person  attacked.  Why  then  did  he  appear  in 
public?  and  why  reproach  people  in  general  who  refuse  to  wor- 
ship the  Virgin  Mary  i 

In  conclusion,  allow  me  to  draw  the  attention  of  your  read- 
ers to  a  quotation  made  by  Mr.  Quigley  from  S.  Epiphanius 
(I  have  not  verified  it,  but  it  will  suit  my  purpose  as  it  stands), 
which  he  thinks  very  telling  against  persons  outside  his  church, 
but  which,  '•  by  a  strange  Nemesis,"  points  its  darts  against 
himself  and  co-religionists.  "  It  is  no  less  criminal,"  says  the 
saint,  "  to  vilify  the  Holy  Virgin  than  to  glorify  her  above 
measure."  Now,  I  suppose  that  not  even  the  most  rabid  prot- 
estant  will  dissent  fron  the  assertion  that  it  is  a  crime  to  vilify 
the  Blessed  Virgin  or  Indeed  any  other  saint  living  or  de- 
parted— it  remains,  liowever,  for  Mr.  Quigley  and  his  friends 
to  tell  lis  how  much  further  we  should  go  than  Liguori  and 
the  Raccolta  I  quoted  in  glorifying  the  Holy  Virgin  before  we 
become  criminous.  I  have  no  doubt  myself  what  the  answer 
of  S.  Epiphanius  himself  would  be. 

Yours  faitlifully, 

John  M.  Davenport, 
Priest  of  the  Mission  Church. 

December  2d,  1887. 


VI. 
LETTER  FROM  MR.  QUIGLEY. 


IPSE,    IPSA,   IPSrM. 


To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe  : 

Sir, — I   am   not,  the  public  cannot  be,  satisfied  with  the 
latest  shuffle  in  this  matter  of  the  writer  in  Saturday's  paper. 


18  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

It  is  quite  "  too  thin,"— too  diaphanous  indeed  and  your  in- 
terested readers  will  easily  "  catch  on."     To  exhaust  every  ob- 
ligation of  courtesy  to  the  Bishop  I  liave  liad  all  the  papers 
sent  to  him  to-day.     The  talk  about  misrepresentation  is  sim- 
l)ly  absurd.     Mr.  Ellis,  of  the  Globe,  was  present  at  the  lec- 
ture,  and  the  Globe's  report  (Nov.  23)  sustains  me.     The 
Bishop  said  substantially  what  I  have  charged  against  him  and 
on  the  spot  immediately  after  the  lecture  I  protested  to  Mr. 
G.  Herbert  Lee,  Secretary  to  Lecture  Committee,  against  the 
incorrectness  and  unfairness  of  the  Bishop's  statement.    But 
Saturday's  letter  makes  it  even  worse  for  the  Bishop,  and  I 
cannot  believe  he  will  so  stultify  himself  as  to  adopt  it  as  a 
part  of  his  defence.     However,  I  propose  patiently  to  await 
Lis  action  after  he  will  have  seen  the  Globe's  report,  my  first 
letter  and  the  subsequent  correspondence.     In  this  country, 
happily,  no  man  in  church  or  state  is  beyond  the  reach  of  fair 
criticism  of  his  public  utterances.     If  the  Bishop  is  content 
with  the  defence  made  for  him,  I  will  not  complain. 

The  Bishop's  defender  says  I  am  indignant  that  any  one  be- 
sides the  Bishop  should  notice  my  letter.  Surely  I  have  not 
manifested  thus  far  any  indignation.  I  regret  if  my  inatten- 
tion has  unduly  wounded  his  vanity.  I  did  not  mean  it.  I 
only  desire  to  give  the  Bishop  an  opportunity  to  vindicate  him- 
self or  to  refuse  to  do  so.  In  either  case,  I  perhaps  ought  to 
assure  his  defender,  I  will  not  forget  him.  Meanwhile  let  him 
castigate  somewhat  his  vanity  and  cultivate  the  spiritual  tem- 
per by  reading  "  Liguori  and  the  Raccolta." 

Respectfully  yours, 

R.  F.  Quigley. 

Ritcliie's  Building,  Monday,  A.  M. 


Pkelimixaey  Letters.  19 

VII. 
LETTER  FROM  MK.  QUIGLEY. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   CHALLENGE. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Glohe : 

Siii, — This  matter  has  now  assumed  a  new  phase.  I  meant 
my  criticism  of  Bishop  Kiugdon's  statements,  as  set  out  in  my 
tirst  letter,  to  be  a  candid  talk  between  gentlemen  with  you  as 
my  interlocutor.  I  sought,  by  the  "  sweat  reasonableness  "  of 
a  logic  of  facts  and  authority,  at  once  simple  and  irenic,  to  lead 
his  Lordship  to  avow  and  correct  a  mistake  into  which  he 
miglit  have  unwittingly  fallen.  I  was  willing,  even,  to  con- 
cede something  to  his  iconoclastic  research  and  fancy,  by 
granting  that  ipsa  might  be  a  misprint  for  ipse  or  ipsum  in- 
deed, if  he  would  only  forego  the  luxury  of  creating  a  new 
anti-Catholic  tradition  in  this  city  by  connecting  such  misprint 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  as  cause  and 
effect.  I  proved  unanswerably  that  there  is  no  difference  in 
setise  to  the  Catholic  mind  between  the  three  readings,  and 
consequently  there  is  no  choice  so  far  as  any  matter  of  doctrine 
is  concerned.  I  have  waited  a  reasonable  time  for  some  sign. 
His  Lordship,  however,  dies,  and — i?npemtent,  except  so  far 
as  vicarious  utterances  can  be  made  to  do  duty.  The  ^^car  is 
•'  John  M.  Davenport,  Priest  of  the  Mission  Church."  Why 
should  I  waste  words  here  over  the  vicar's  wretched  attempt  to 
deal  with  the  "  academic  aspect  of  the  question  "  ?  "  Where, 
then,  is  to  be  found,"  he  asks,  "  a  Latin  version  of  the  Bible 
with  ipsum  in  this  passage  i  I  have  never  read  of  it  in  any 
commentary."  Therefore,  of  course,  there  is  no  such  read- 
ing ;  though,  after  opening  another  bottle  of  fog,  he  straight- 
way confesses  that  the  statement  charged  against  the  Bishop 
was  "  too  laid  and  u7iquaUJied" 

And  now  the  vicar  warms  to  his  work !  Verily  'tis  the 
shriek  of  a  lost  spirit  or  the  scream  of  a  drunken  Beelzebub ! 
Sophocles  was  accused  of  madness  and  wrote  the  "CEdipus  at 


80  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

CoLONOS  "  as  Ins  vindication.  This  yclept  "j)rie6t"  is  taxed 
with  ^^ papistical  inclininys,^^  by  more  consistent  Protestants, 
and  behold  his  answer:  "Extravagances,"  "Enormities," 
"  Impions  utterances,"  "  Impious  acts  of  worship  and  prayer," 
"  Idolatrous  devotions,"  "  Idolatrous  worship  1  '■  Good  God  ! 
"What  monstrous  charges !  And  from  such  a  quarter,  my 
Protestant  fellow-citizens  will  say — Et  tu  Brute!  The  creed 
of  a  Fenelon,  Vincent  de  Paul,  Aquinas,  Xavier,  De  Sales, 
Augustine,  Bute,  Ilipon,  Lyons,  Newman,  ACanning,  Leo  XIII., 
80  characterized  !  But  there  is  a  compensation.  One  of  the 
chief  glories  of  our  time  is  its  abhorrence  of  bloated,  spongy 
shams,  religious  or  otherwise — mere  show  without  substance. 
No  creed  can  live  in  its  stormy  surf  that  will  not  bear  its 
piercing  light.  It  demands  from  every  man  "  a  reason  for  the 
faith  that  is  in  him."  I  thank  God  for  this.  No  mere  news- 
paper letters  are,  it  seems  to  me,  at  all  adequate  to  the  proper 
discussion  of  the  above  charges.  I  love  to  meet  my  opj^onent 
on  any  important  question  face  to  face  in  the  presence  of  my 
fellow-citizens.  I  have  a  profound  trust  in  their  intellectual 
honesty.  Therefore,  sir,  through  you,  I  now  challenge  the 
Right  Reverend  Dr.  Kingdon,  Coadjutor  Bishop  of  Frederic- 
ton,  and  "  John  M.  Davenport,  Priest  of  the  Mission  Church," 
to  a  public  discussion,  in  the  Institute  or  elsewhere,  of  the 
position  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  the  Mother  of  the  Redeemer, 
in  Catholic  theology,  when  I  will  undertake  to  vindicate  that 
position  to  the  intellect  and  conscience  of  my  fellow-citizens 
from  Tradition,  Reason,  and  Holy  Scripture. 

To  facilitate  matters,  I  will  request  Rev.  Dr.  Bennet,'  Dr. 
A.  A.  Stockton,"  Dr.  Alward,'  Thomas  Millidge,  Esquire,*  and 
Hon.  R.  J.  Ritchie,*  to  act  as  my  committee  to  meet  a  like 
committee  from  my  opponents  for  the  purpose  of  arranging 
the  details  of  the  discussion.     And  may  God  defend  the  right. 

Respectfully  yours, 

R.  F.  QuiGLET. 
Ritchie's  Building, 
Feast  of  the  Immaculate  Conception,  Dec.  8,  1887. 

'Presbyterian,  'Methodist,  'Baptist,  ^Anglican,  'Catholic. 


Pkeliminaky  Letters.  21 

YIII. 
LETTER  FROM  THE  VICAR. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IPSUM. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — What  would  be  thought  of  a  lawn  tennis  player  who, 
after  choosing  his  own  court,  petulantly  demanded  a  change 
before  the  finish  of  the  set  simply  because  after  des2)erate 
efforts  he  had  failed  to  score  \ 

I  cannot  accede  to  your  correspondent's  request,  however 
polite  and  polished  the  style  of  his  invitation  may  be.  I  see 
nothing  to  be  gained  by  doing  so.  The  public  has  an  excel- 
lent view  of  our  position  and  can  fairly  judge  the  issue  of  our 
contention  more  fairly  and  deliberately,  I  think,  than  if  we 
adjourned  to  tlie  limited  area  of  the  Institute. 

The  matter  is  very  simple.  Mr.  Quigley  has  impugned 
Bishop  Kingdon's  scholarship,  and  has  emphasized,  in  the  title 
of  his  letters,  what  he  considers  an  important  emendation.  He 
has  also  censured  all  Christians  who  do  not  worship  the 
Blessed  Virgin. 

I  have,  therefore,  asked  him,  in  the  first  place,  to  mention 
some  of  those  standard  Latin  versions  of  the  Bible  he  accused 
the  Bishop  of  overlooking.  He  has  now  had  a  fortnight  for 
the  search  and  probably  the  help  of  learned  friends.  Let  him 
produce  his  witnesses — a  few  lines  in  your  paper  can  notify 
them — or  else  let  him  make  the  amende  honorable. 

Again — if  I  made  misstatements  with  regard  to  the  meaning 
of  the  Hebrew  or  Septuagint  renderings  of  Genesis  iii.  15,  a 
few  lines  of  solid  argument  will  ensure  my  discomfiture.  If, 
moreover,  1  have  misquoted  Liguori's  "  Glories  of  Mary,"  or 
the  "  Raccolta,"  he  can  easily  expose  my  deceit.  If,  however, 
he  cannot  do  this,  then  I  contend  that  the  public  are  already  in 
possession  of  facts  (though  I  could  easily  multiply  them)  which 
amply  justify  the  expressions  I  used  about  the  worship  of  the 
Virgin  in  the  Roman  Catholic  communion. 


22  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

It  would  bo  an  excellent  thiti;^  if  all  your  readers  would 
secure  for  themselves  copies  of  "  Lignori "  and  the  "  liaccolta." 
I  will  make  no  further  disclosures  till  occasion  requires. 

Yours  faithfully, 

John  M.  Davenport, 
Priest  of  the  Missiou  Church. 
December  9,  1887. 


IX. 
LETTER  FROM  THE  VICAR. 


IPSE,   IPSA. 


To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — Though  the  controversy  on  Genesis  iii.  15  seems  now 
over,  the  interest  it  has  awakened  is  not.  I  shall  feel  obliged, 
therefore,  if,  for  the  benefit  of  J>iblical  students,  yon  will  allow 
me  a  little  space  for  an  extract  from  a  famous  livinj;  Italian 
Roman  Catholic  scholar  of  catacomb-inscription  celebrity,  De 
Rossi,  on  Genesis  iii.  15.  He  enumerates  thirty-five  "most 
exceedingly  and  insurmountable  original  authorities  and  wit- 
nesses" iji  support  of  the  masculine  "//e  shall  brui.ee  the 
serpent's  head."  Among  them  (1)  all  trustworthy  Hebrew 
MSS.;  (2)  the  analogy  of  the  "sacred  context,  in  which  the 
verb  which  follows  and  the  pronoun  suflfixed  are  masculine : 
(3)  the  Samaritan  text  and  Samaritan  version ;  (4)  the  Greek 
version  of  the  Septuagint,  all  the  MS.  editions  and  versions 
derived  from  it,  Ethiopic,  Coptic,  and  Old  Latin,  and  those 
who  used  it,  whether  Greek-speaking  Jews,  as  Pliilo,  or  Chris- 
tian writers,  agreeing;  (5)  all  the  Chaldee  paraphrases,  Onke- 
los,  Jonathan,  and  the  Jerusalem ;  (6)  all  the  other  versions  of 
the  East,  the  oldest  Syriac,  the  Arabic  of  Saadias,  the  Mauri- 
tanian  Arabic  of  Erpenius,  the  Persian  of  Tawes ;  (7)  some 
MSS.  of  the  Vulgate  .  .  .  . ;  (8)  many  editions  of  the  Vulgate 


Preliminary  Letters.  23 

on  the  margin,  l)eforo  those  of  Sixtiis  and  Clement ;  (9)  the 
pure  version  of  Jerome  in  tlie  Bihliotheca  Divma,  edited  hy 
the  Benedictines  of  S.  Maur,  0pp.  T.  1." 

Tlien  follows  a  long  list  of  the  Fathers  who  quote  the  mas- 
cnline.'  lie  then  asserts,  "the  masculine  reading  is  better,  by 
which  the  bruising  of  the  serpent  is  ascribed  immediately  and 
alo7ie  to  the  Seed  of  the  woman,  and  from  which  the  redemp- 
tion, power,  and  divinity  of  the  Messiah  are  plainly  elicited." 

His  conclusion  reads  as  follows:  "To  whomsoever,  then, 
the  present  reading  of  the  Vulgate  (i.  e.,  '  She,'  the  woman, 
'shall  bruise,'  &c.,)  belongs,  whether  to  the  interpreter,  or 
(which  is  more  probable)  to  the  amanuensis,  it  ought  to  le 
amended  from  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  fountain-heads,  and  to 
be  referred  to  those  passages  of  the  Clementine  edition,  which 
yet  can  and  ought  to  be  conformed  to  the  Hebrew  text,  and  to 
le  amended  hy  the  authw'dy  of  the  ChiirchP  (The  italics  are 
mine.)  De  Rossi,  Varr.  Lectt.  Vet.  Test.,  Vol.  iv.  App.  pp. 
208,  209,  211. 

Here,  then,  is  overwhelming  evidence  of  the  accuracy  of 
our  translators  of  the  Bible  in  this  particular. 

It  must,  however,  prove  very  perplexing  to  those  who  have 
built  so  much  upon  the  false  reading. 

Canon  Oakley,  an  Ultramontane  of  the  Ultramontanes,  says 
In  his  review  of  Dr.  Pusey's  Irenicon  (1866):  "  I  now  come  to 
what  we  (Roman  Catholics)  regard  as  the  Scrijptural  germ  of 
every  doctrine,  and  the  legitimate  ground  of  every  authorized 
devotion  on  the  subject  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  I  mean  the 
prediction  of  her  office  in  the  Christian  Dispensation,  uttered 
by  Almighty  God  at  the  time  of  the  fall,"  (viz.,  Gen.  iii.  15). 

This  is  a  very  strong  statement,  and  ought  to  be  exceeding 
startling  to  those  who  accept  it,  now  that  such  a  great  Roman 
Catholic  authority  as  De  Rossi  has  convicfted  the  text  of  very 
serious  fundamental  error,  especially  when  it  is  known  that 
Liguori  (Glories  of  Mary,  Pt.  11.  Disc.  1),  Pope  Pius  IX.,  and 
many  of  the  Bishops  who  asked  him  to  promulge  the  Dogma 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception,  based  their  chief  arguments  in 


'  The  Fathers  "  quote  the  masculine  and  the  neuter. 


24  Ii'SK,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

favor  of  it  on  the  false  reading  in  some  such  terms  as  these : 
"  She  who  was  said  to  crush  Satan  could  never  have  been  even 
for  a  moment,  even  in  her  mother's  womb,  under  original  sin." 
Very  startling,  I  say,  since,  in  the  apt  phrase  of  Dr.  Pusey, 
"  the  major  premise  of  the  argument  is  gone,  when  it  appears 
that  nothing  is  said  here  (Gen,  iii.  15)  of  any  personal  victory 
of  hers."  It  was  to  the  Seed  of  the  Woman,  God  Incarnate, 
directly  and  personally,  that  the  crushing  of  the  Serpent's  head 
was  attributed,  not  to  the  woman  nor  to  Him  in  conjunction 
with  her,  but  to  Ilim  alone,  and  it  is  in  Him  and  through  Him 
that  all  faithful  Christians  are  enabled  to  crush  Satan  under 
their  feet  also. 

Thanking  you  for  your  space,  I  remain, 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

John  M.  Davenport, 
Priest  of  the  Mission  Church. 
December  15,  1887. 

POSTSCRIPT. 

I  beg  to  call  the  special  attention  of  my  readers  to  the  above 
letter.  The  Vicar  here  commences  with  malicious  earnestness 
that  career  of  fraud,  falsehood,  and  dishonesty  which  he  ran  so 
recklessly  during  this  discussion.  He  has  been  guilty  of  the 
very  grossest  kind  of  literary  forgery  in  dealing  with  Father 
De  Kossi,  while  his  calumny  on  Father  Oakley  has  branded 
him  with  the  mark  of  Cain.  I  exposed  his  infamy  here,  and 
challenged  him  over  and  over  again,  but  he  dared  not  to  open 
his  mouth  in  reply.  Of  the  statements  made  on  his  own  au- 
thority \\\  this  letter,  not  one  is  true.  I  offer  these  preliminary 
remarks  now  to  prepare  my  readers  for  the  full — almost  verbal 
— criticism  which  is  given  in  the  Resume  and  Itejomder.  It 
is  also  referred  to  in  the  Rehutter,  in  connection  witli  his  con- 
fession of  the  crimes  here  charged  against  him. 

I  will  but  remark  now  on  a  further  proof  of  my  charges  not 
noticed  before.  Tlie  Vicar  makes  De  Rossi  say  that,  '■''All 
trustworthy  Hebrew  MSS."  have  Tjyse;  whereas  what  De  Rossi 
says  is :    ^^ Almost  all  Hebrew  MSS."  have  Ipse.     Again  he 


PuELIMINARY    LeTTERS.  25 

makes  De  Rossi  say :  "  All  the  Chaldee  paraphrases,  Onkelos, 
etc.,"  have  Ipse,  whereas  on  the  very  page  in  Pusey  from 
which  he  took  his  shamelessly  garbled  quotation,  De  liussi 
honestly  admits  that  there  is  one  MS.  of  Onkelos  that  has  Ipsa. 

Again,  ray  readers  will  notice  in  the  quotation,  that  De  Kossi 
says :  "  Some  MSS.  of  the  Vulgate — (that  is  in  the  text),  (and) 
many  editions  of  the  Vulgate  on  the  margin,  before  those  of 
Sixtus  and  Clement,"  have  Ipse.  Precisely.  But  this  is  simply 
what  Cardinal  Bellarmine,  though  himself  in  favor  of  retaining 
Ipsa.,  said  to  Chemnitz.  "  I  reply,"  writes  the  Cardinal,  "  that 
the  Vulgate  is  VARIOUS  here ;  for  some  Codices  have  Ip)se^ 
some  Ipsa,  and  besides  IT  IS  NOT  CONTRARY  TO  THE 
VULGATE  EDITION  should  one  be  convinced  that  he 
ought  to  read  Ipse  or  IpsumP 

The  gigantic  intellect  of  iiuriarminc,  a  most  devout  and  en- 
thusiastic believer  in  the  Immaculate  Conce])tion  300  years 
before  its  dogmatic  definition,  could  neither  see  the  "  tremen- 
dous importance  "  attached  to  Ipsa  by  Bishop  Kingdon,  nor 
yet  the  "serious  fundamental  error"  alleged  by  his  Vicar! 
But  then,  you  know,  he  never  studied  theology  at  Oxford,  and 
unfortunately  was  born  too  soon  to  get  the  benefit  of  Little- 
dale's  Plain  Reasons.  Get  away,  you  Liliputs,  get  away,  and 
fly  into  space  1 

R.  F.  Q. 


LETTER  I. 
IPSE,  IPSA,  IPSUM— A  RESUMII. 

BY   B.  F.  QCIGLEr. 

St.  John,  N.  B.,        ) 
New  Year's  Eve.,  Dec.  31,  1887.  f 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Glohe : 

Sir, — Since  the  declination  of  ray  challenge  in  this  matter, 
many  duties,  private  and  professional,  have  conspired  to  push 
it  simply  aside  from  my  attention.  This,  however,  I  do  not 
now  regret  since  Bishop  Kingdon's  Vicar  has  been  thereby 
enabled  to  offer  another  installment  of  his  case — a  tremendous, 
critical  cataclysm  as  he  perhaps  thinks,  and  which  he  submits 
for  the  beneiit  of  "  Biblical  students  "  forsooth !  I  am  not  by 
profession  either  a  Biblical  Exegete  or  Theologue,  but  most 
heartilv  do  I  on  their  behalf  thank  him  for  his  diligence  and 
sagacity.  The  threatened  "further  disclosures"  not  being 
thus  far  forthcoming,  I  may  now^  charitably  "  ho23e  his  blun- 
ders are  all  out,"  and  that  he  stands  up  for  judgment. 

Here  I  must  refer,  but  only  parenthetically,  to  my  oppon- 
ent's statement  that  I  have  "  probably  had  the  help  of  learned 
friends  "  in  this  discussion.  Characteristic  Surely  !  The  petty 
malice  of  the  insinuation  is  amusing  enrugh,  but  it  witnesses 
to  such  insatiable  vanity,  solenm  self-conceit  and  debasing 
egotism  that  it  is  positively  pitiful.  These  weaknesses  blind 
him  to  the  fact  that  such  an  assertion  is  an  unconscious  tribute 
to  the  logic  and  force  of  an  argument  which  a  Bishop  and  a 
soi-disnnt  "  priest"  are  incapable  of  answering.  I  accept  the 
tribute  for  the  sake  of  the  honor  done  to  the  truth  which  I 
espouse,  but  the  simple  fact  is  I  have  received  no  help  from 
friends  learned  or  unlearned,  directly  or  indirectly.  I  asked 
no  help,  I  needed  none ;  and  with  the  exception  of  a  verifica- 
tion or  two,  I  have  relied  entirely  upon  my  own  library.  But 
(86) 


A  Resume.  27 

lie  does  not  believe  in  the  truth  of  his  own  statement.  Theo- 
logical charlatan  and  religious  dwarf  that  he  is,  he  perched  on 
the  shoulders  of  the  "  armed  strong  man  "  of  the  Protestimt 
prejudice  against  the  Blessed  Mother  of  our  Kedeemer,  which 
he  himself  admits,  and  adopting  the  Chinese  method  of  war- 
fare, charged  upon  me  with  shield  aloft,  bearing  the  beast  with 
seven  heads  and  ten  horns,  with  outcries  a  id  shouts  of  derision 
and  vituperation,  of  "  idolatry,"  "  impiety,"  and  ''  blasphemy." 
I  thought  the  height  from  which  he  had  fallen  so  frenzied 
him  that  he  became  profoundly  unconscious  of  all  demands  of 
logical  argumentation.  Nevertheless,  I  offered  to  meet  him  on 
the  public  platform,  where  "the  help  of  learned  friends" 
would  not  avail  me,  but  he  threw  his  shoes  into  the  air  and 
took  to  flight,  because  he  could  "  see  nothing  to  be  gained  by 
doing  so."  A  lawn  tennis  set  he  thinks  more  entertaining  and 
divertinfj  !  "Well,  1  shall  be  the  last  to  dis^wte  the  correctness 
of  his  judgment. 

Now,  I  suppose,  at  any  rate,  I  hope,  that  this  writer  has  his 
serious  moments.  His  last  letter  gave  some  evidence  of  such. 
In  Cardinal  Newman's  phrase  I  wish  "to  appeal  from  Philip 
drunk  to  Philip  sober,"  I  propose,  therefore,  to  examine  the 
strictures  made  by  him,  in  his  series  of  letters,  upon  my  first 
letter,  so  far  as  they  are  relevant  to  the  points  at  issue,  and  I 
am  now  perforce  obliged  to  consider  Bishop  Kingdon  as  speak- 
ing in  and  through  him,  and  consequently  inculpated* with 
him.  Meeting  my  opponents  with  visor  up  I  shall  not  hesi- 
tate to  deal  blows  direct  and  heavy,  and  to  indulge  in  such 
severity  of  comment  as  I  think  their  errors  at  once  so  extreme 
and  grotesque^ imperatively  demand.  I  am,  of  course,  aware 
that  with  a  certain  class  of  my  Protestant  fellow-citizens  in 
such  a  matter  as  this  there  is  one  obliffation  of  honestv  and 
decorum  imposed  on  a  Catholic  and  quite  another  on  a  Prot- 
estant. The  latter  may  freely  use  invective,  cowardly  insinu- 
ation, perversions  of  meaning,  vague  declamation,  insult  and 
scurrillity,  and  the  like  a])j)liance8  of  a  worthless  cause,  or  a 
worthless  advocate ;  the  former  must  manifest  towards  his 
opponents  a  sweetness  of  disposition  and  temper  almost  an- 
gelic.    Charges  of  "  idolatry,"  "  impiety  "  and  blasphemy  may 


28  IrsE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

be  made  against  us ;  men  witli  pretensions  to  learning,  with 
character  and  reputation  to  maintain,  and  with  a  cause  to  ad- 
vocate, may  repeat  all  the  exploded  calumnies  and  publications 
of  frenzied  fanatics  against  the  Catholic  church,  yet  we  may 
not  hurl  them  back  witli  indignant  defiance.  From  pulpit  and 
platform,  tlieological  and  literary  pedlars  may  level  against  us 
the  most  sweeping  and  crushing  accusations,  in  their  crass  ig- 
norance draw  the  most  atrocious  pictures  of  our  doctrines  and 
religious  practices,  uiisrepresent  and  falsify  the  Catholic  creed 
in  every  particular,  and  to  many  Protestant  minds  "  everything 
is  lovely."  We  are  not  men,  we  have  not  characters  to  lose, 
we  have  not  feelings  to  be  wounded,  we  have  not  friends ;  we 
liave  nothing  personal  about  us,  we  are  not  the  fellow-creat- 
ures of  our  accusers,  we  are  not  gentlemen,  we  are  not  Chris- 
tians ;  and  yet  in  spite  of  such  provocation,  in  the  "  style  polite 
and  polished,^'  in,  candor,  generosity,  honorable  feeling,  in 
manly  and  noble  bearing  towards  our  Protestant  neighbors  and 
straightforwardness  in  our  dealings  with  them,  we  must  simply 
surpass  them  as  much  as  the  Cedars  of  Lebanon  outgrow  the 
little  shrubs  before  we  get  credit  for  the  attributes  of  ordinary 
hiunan  beings.  But  enough.  I  hope  I  am,  as  I  ever  have 
been,  too  philosophic,  too  magnanimous,  built  on  too  broad  a 
scale  mentally  at  least,  too  impervious  to  the  unbecoming,  the 
indecorous,  the  petty  and  miserable,  to  be  irritated  or  dispirited 
at  being  called  names,  or  being  treated  with  injustice  or  con- 
tumely for  my  religion's  sake.  Betimes  it  must  l)e  no  mean 
tonic  spiritual  and  intellectual.  Thus  much  am  I  let  to  say  in 
standing  off  for  the  first  time  before  my  opponent  and  taking 
a  death  grip  of  him,  of  course  metaphorically" speaking.  It 
will  serve  to  introduce  the  main  subject  and  to  clear  the 
ground.  I  make  to  him  no  irenicon,  nor  will  I  pretend  to  ex- 
hibit a  chivalrous  courtesy  to  one  wlio  can  ])lay  such  shabby^ 
tricks  with  the  sacred  memory  of  our  Mother. 

I  now  charge  against  him  that  his  attempted  defense  of 
Bishop  Kingdon  is  a  glaring  and  undeviating  misrepresenta- 
tion of  the  true  position  of  the  question — a  gross,  unpardon- 
able and  dislionest  attempt  to  shift  the  ground  measured  for 
the  lists  in  my  critique  on  the   Bishop's  statement,  and  the 


A   E.E8UME.  29 

most  boldly  and  impudently  illogical  shuffling  I  have  ever 
known.  Thus  I  begin,  and  I  hold  myself  bound  by  the 
saerednees  of  my  manhood  and  her  honor  who  gave  it  me 
to  make  good  my  indictment. 

To  recapitulate  then.  Seeing  it  announced  in  the  papers 
that  Bishop  Kingdon  would  lecture  on  "  Misprints,"  I  bought 
a  ticket  and  took  a  seat  a  few  feet  from  the  lecturer  in  the 
public  hall.  The  lecture  was  illustrated,  so  to  speak.  The 
words  commented  as  "  Misprints  " — mostly  Greek  and  Latin — 
were  exhibited  in  large  letters  on  sheets  of  paper  attached  to  a 
large  framework  or  blackboard.  On  one  sheet  were  the  two  words 
"  Ipse — Ipsa,"  placed  one  above  the  other.  After  the  lecturer 
had  spoken  about  three-quarters  of  an  hour  on  differc'it  "  Mis- 
prints," he  said  substantially  as  follows :  "  Hitherto  the  errors 
or  misprints  of  which  I  have  spoken  have  been  of  no  great  im- 
portance, practically  speaking ;  but  I  now  come  to  one  which 
in  these  times  has  been  the  cause  of  grave  errors.  Here  (point- 
ing to  the  sheet  containing  the  words  "  ipse — ipsa  ")  by  a  mis- 
print of  the  letter  "  a  "  for  the  letter  "  e  "  there  lamentably  re- 
sulted, that  tidrty-three  years  ago  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
was  led  to  promulgate  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion. The  Globe's  report  was  as  follows :  "  Sometimes  the 
substitution  of  one  letter  for  another  made  a  vast  difference, 
and  as  an  illustration  of  this  he  referred  to  the  words  Ipse 
and  Ipsa,  the  latter  word  in  an  important  passage  in  the 
Douay  Bihle  being  the  foundation  of  the  dogma  of  the  Im- 
maculate Conception.''''  AVe^substantially  agree  on  the  Bishop's 
statement.  He  offered  no  argument  in  support  of  it.  He 
said  St.  Bernard  favored  Ipsa,  but  that  while  he  was  a  "very 
devout  soul,"  he  was  altogether  "  unreliable  "  !  Had  the  Bishop 
stopped  here  his  hearers  migiit  have  fairly  inferred  that  he 
meant  to  say  St.  Bernard  was  not  an  authority  on  Textual 
criticism,  but  he  went  on  to  prove  the  Saint's  unreliability  in 
such  matters  by  saying  that  he  prophesied  a  successful  issue 
for  a  crusade  which  turned  out  disastrously  I  Wonderful  logic ! 
It  reminded  me  of  a  school-boy  speaking  of  Newton  or  Iler- 
Bchel  as  dunces  in  mathematics,  or  a  blooming  freshman  after 
wading  through  Aid  rich  or  Whately,  speaking  of  Kaut  or 


80  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Ilegel,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  or  Aristotle,  as  grossly  deficient 
in  their  knowledge  of  logical  science !  I  could  not  contain  my 
astonishment  and  amazement  at  the  Bishop's  statement,  that 
the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  was  in  any  way 
connected  with  or  dependent  upon  a  choice  between  Ipse  and 
Ipsa,  such  a  dispute,  if  one,  being  absolutely  irrelevant,  and 
on  the  spot  immediately  after  the  lecture  I  protested  to  the 
secretary  of  the  lecture  committee  against  the  incorrectness  and 
unfairness  of  the  Bishop's  statement.  Writing  to  the  Globe 
a  day  or  two  afterwards  I  characterized  it  as  "  wholly  incorrect 
and  baseless."  The  first  dishonesty  my  opponent  commits  is 
in  connecting  these  words  of  mine  with  the  question  of  "  mis- 
print," whereas,  it  is  evident  I  used  them  to  describe  the 
Bishop's  statement  that  the  Immaculate  Conception  was 
founded  on  such,  even  assuming  that  a  "  misprint "  could  be 
made  out. 

Now,  I  do  not  propose  that  there  shall  be  any  doubt  about 
the  truth  of  this  matter  or  about  my  view  of  the  Bishop's 
position.  "Mr.  Quigley  has  impugned  Bishop  Kingdon's 
scholarship,"  says  my  opponent.  That  is  just  it.  I  do  so,  and 
most  emphatically,  and  I  characterize  it  as  simply  slovenly  in 
this  particular  at  least.  This  I  consider  mild  to  begin  with. 
Much  ought  to  depend  on  the  Bishop's  animiis.  As  I  have 
proved  before,  and  will  directly  repeat,  the  Bishop  is  absolutely 
without  a  leg  to  stand  on.  Now,  what  was  the  drift  and  in- 
tention of  his  assertion  ?  Was  it  the  result  of  pure  ignorance 
of  what  he  was  talking  about,  su#i  as  led  Dr.  Johnson  to  de- 
fine "  Pastern  "  as  "  the  knee-joint  of  the  horse,"  or  was  it  a 
desire  to  commend  liimself  to  an  audience  naturally  indeed 
fair  and  generous  in  their  instincts,  but  educated  in  traditions 
and  prejudices  which  predisposed  them  to  credit  the  wildest 
charges  against  "Popery";  or  did  he  come  there  with  his  dia- 
gram in  his  pocket  prepared,  and  with  malice  aforethought,  to 
attack  the  Catholic  church  and  more  especially  in  the  honor 
paid  by  her  to  Our  Blessed  Lady  ?  He  can  have  his  choice. 
He  has  stood  by  his  Vicar  and  must  be  taken  to  adopt  his  line 
of  thought  and  defense — perhaps,  indeed,  he  gave  the  inno- 
cent  the  unfortunate  extract,  that  edgetool  from  De  Rossi !    So 


A  Rk8Ume.  bl 

at  least  I  opine.     I  will  see  that  he  gets  all  the  comfort  possi- 
ble out  of  it. 

Again  :  I  accused  the  Bishop  of  suppressing  the  real  state  of 
the  question  on  which  he  undertook  to  speak.  I  repeat  it. 
The  real  dispute,  such  as  it  is,  is  between  Tpse^  Ipsa  and  Ipsom. 
There  is  no  place  for  any  question  of  "  misprint. "  Such  a 
designation  of  what  is  involved  in  this  three-fold  reading  is 
wholly  improper.  It  is  simply  a  various  keadino  and  for- 
tunately like  "  many  hundred  thousand,  probably  upwards  of 
a  million  of  such "  contained  in  Kennicott  and  De  Rossi's 
Bible,  absolutely  insignificant,  because  it  does  not  affect  the 
sense.  Did  the  Bishop  know  the  real  state  of  the  question,  or 
was  he  bent  only  on  making  a  point  against  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  discrediting  the  truth  of  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion before  an  audience  not  more  than  six  of  whom  knew  what 
that  doctrine  was  i  I  do  not  think  the  Bishop  himself  knows 
to  this  very  hour.  I  never  met  a  Protestant  clergyman  wlio 
did  know  it  before  I  had  explained  it  to  him.  So  great  a  man 
as  the  illustrious  Prof.  Agassiz,  of  Harvard  University,  did 
not  know  it  until  I  explained  it  to  him  one  day.  He  was  de- 
livering a  course  of  scientific  lectures — strongly  anti-Darwin- 
ian—on  "  The  Natural  foundation  of  Zoological  Aflinity,"  and 
one  day  he  was  discussing  "  Embryology."  The  audience  in 
the  gallery  of  the  Museum  was  a  distinguished  one.  Long- 
fellow, with  other  noted  IHtet'ateurs,  was  there.  While  speak- 
ing of  a  fact  in  connection  with  Bee-culture,  discovered  in 
Germany  by  the  observations  of  Pastor  Dzierzon,  he  suddenly 
stopped  and  said  that  "  he  never  faced  this  fact  without  being 
reminded  of  the  Church  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion." Even  now  I  remember  the  scene  so  distinctly  I  I  could 
not  see  where  the  Inunaculate  Conception,  as  I  understood  it, 
came  in,  and  trjnng  to  think  it  out  I  heard  little  of  the  closing 
part  of  the  lecture.  I  was  not  satisfied.  Though  studying  law 
I  lived  in  Divinity  Hall  quarters,  and  was  thus  brought  into 
daily  contact  with  the  ablest  Unitarian  theological  scholars  of 
the  United  States  resident  at  Harvard  and  those  who  visited 
there — Clarke,  Hale,  Bellows,  Savage,  Brooke,  Bartol  and 
others — notoriously  the  best  educated  Protestant  clergy  in  the 


32  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

world.  I  knew  Agassiz's  statement  would  evoke  discussion,  and 
I  felt  bound  to  get  at  the  bottom  of  the  Prof.'s  thought  before 
meeting  my  theological  friends.  I  called  at  his  room  and  the 
great  Naturalist  talked  the  matter  over  with  me  with  the  sim- 
plicity and  condescension  of  a  child,  lie  simply  did  not  know 
anything  at  all  about  the  "  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion," as  taught  by  the  Catholic  Church.  Wliat  he  meant  was 
the  Miraculous  Conception  of  Christ — the  Incarnation — and 
the  physiological  fact  he  referred  to  was  a  scientific  tribute  to 
its  truth.  As  I  had  anticipated,  the  discussion  came  up,  but 
my  case  was  won  before  it  commenced.  Agassiz  had  been 
misunderstood  through  las  loose  or  careless  use  of  theological 
terms,  with  which  like  so  many  scientists  of  to-day  he  had  not 
made  himself  familiar,  but  my  friends  had  their  compensation, 
for  they  learned  what  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  was.  And  so  may  it  be  in  this  present  case ! 
"  Learned  and  devout  men  stumble  at  this  doctrine  because  in 
matter  of  fact  they  do  not  know  what  we  mean  by  the  Im- 
maculate Conception."  So  said  Cardinal  Newman  to  Dr. 
Pusey  when  answering  his  famous  '"^Eirenicon''''  of  1864,  and 
pointing  out  to  him  his  ignorance  of  the  matter.  I  am  con- 
vinced, that  the  "  ninety-and-nine  "  of  religiously-minded  Prot- 
estants who  learn  what  this  thrillingly  beautiful  and  sublime 
truth  is  will  say  at  least  what  some  have  said  to  me — "  "Well, 
it  ought  to  be  true."     But  this  incidentally. 

To  return  :  For  the  sake  of  convenience  I  here  set  down 
again  Genesis  iii.  15,  according  to  the  different  versions.  Prot- 
estant version :  And  I  will  put  enmity  hetween  thee  and  the 
woman,  and  hetween  thy  seed  and  her  seed  ;  it  shallhruise  tliy 
head,  etc.  /  Douay  version  :  /  will  put  enmities  het  "een  thee 
and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed  a/nd  her  seed  j  she  shall  crush 
thy  head,  etc.  /  the  Vulgate  :  Inimicitias  ponam  inter  te  et 
muUerem,  et  semen  tuum  et  semen  illius  /  ipsa  conteret  caput 
tuum,  etc.  And  just  here  in  my  first  letter  I  expressed  myself 
with  the  most  careful  and  unexceptionable  distinctness. 
"  This  whole  text  "  or  verse  I  said  "  has  heen  called  hy  the 
early  loriters  in  the  Church  the  Proto-Gospel  hecause  it  con- 
tains the  first  promise  of  a  future  Savior.    It  is,  therefore,  to 


A    ItESUME.  33 

Protestant  and  Catholic  alike  of  transceiulent  importance 
and  very  comprehensive  applica''on^''  Kow,  this  Btateiiieiit 
about  "  THE  whole  text  "  or  verse  i8  very  clear,  and  J  ask  the 
careful  attention  of  my  readers  to  it.     I  then  proceed  to  say : 

"  BUT  IT  WILL  BE  OBSERVED  THAT  THE  PRESENT  CONTENTION  IS 
OVER   THE    FIRST   WORD   OF   THE    SECOND   CLAUSE  ONLY  ;    IT   skull 

hruise  thy  head,  etc.  /  she  shall  crush  thy  head,  etc."  To  tliis 
I  now  add  the  otlier  reading:  "He  shall  hruise  thy  head, 
ctr.,"  not  adopted  l)y  eitlier  tlie  Douay  or  Authorized  Protest- 
ant Version,  but  common  enough  and  recognized  and  estab- 
lished equally  with  the  other  two — "  She"  and  "It." 

Here  is  the  ring  bolt  of  the  whole  matter !  "  The  first  word 
of  the  second  clause  only  " — this  is  "  the  ground  measured  off 
for  the  lists."  This  is  the  thing  discussed  by  the  Bishop,  and 
to  that  I  have  confined  myself  and  propose  to  chain  my  oppo- 
nent. Our  readers  will  see  that  his  vague  declainations,  his 
miserable  fallacies,  his  wretched  sophistries  and  fanfaronades  are 
but  the  necessary  result  of  his  barefaced,  cowardly  and  dishonest 
ignoring  and  malicious  putting  aside  of  my  most  definite  and 
emphatic  explanations  right  here,  and  tliat  they  run  through 
his  whole  attempted  defence  of  the  Bishop  and  the  attack  oa 
the  Catholic  church  he  made  on  his  own  account.  How  be- 
coming in  a  "  true  Catholic  (Caw-tholic)  Christian  "  ! 


LETTER  n. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IP8UM — A   RESTJAIE. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — How  does  the  question  stand  then?  "While  a  great 
many  important  things  are  daily  discussed  in  the  columns  of 
the  Globe,  it  is  hardly  the  place  to  test  by  collation  a  thousand 
or  two  Hebrew,  Greek  and  Latin  MSS.  Kennicott's  magnifi- 
cent Hebrew  Bible  alone  gives  nearly  5em^n./mw</;'^^.^'  Critico- 

'  I  have  examined  this  work  in  Harvard  University  Library. 


84  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Biblical  disquisitions  and  deep  linguistic  athletics  and  exegesis 
are  out  of  place  here.  We  can  reach  such  practical  conclu- 
sions as  we  require  without  them.  The  question  is  not  ahso- 
lutely  which  of  these  three  readings  Moses  used  in  Genesis — 
that  may  never  be  jproved  this  side  of  eternity  ;  but  are  there 
three  and  are  they  and  have  they  been  in  use  and  recognized  ? 

It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  the  Hebrew  text,  tlie  foun- 
tain-head, such  as  we  have  it  now,  is  hopelessly  anibiguous. 
The  learned  Cardinals  IJellarmine  and  liarouius  are  my  author- 
ity. (/  will  refer  later  to  what  my  opponent  says  about  the 
determining  effect  of  ilie  masculine  verb.  Absolute  feak- 
LE88NES8  IS  MY  MOTTO !)  lu  conscquencB  of  this  ambiguity, 
these  three  different  readings  prevailed  among  ecclesiastical 
writers  as  follows :  Ipse  conteret  caput  taum — He  (Christ) 
shall  bruise  thy  head ;  Ipsa  conteret  caput  tuum — She  (the 
woman,  the  Blessed  Virgin,  by  and  through  the  power  of  her 
seed,  Christ)  shall  crush  thy  head ;  Ipsum  conteret  caput  tuum 
— It  (her  seed,  that  is  Christ)  shall  bruise  thy  head. 

Here  let  me  add  an  interesting  fact.  I  do  not  forget  what 
was  done  by  the  venerable  Bede  (died  A.D.  735),  and  the 
good  and  great  Catholic  King  Alfred  (died  901  A.D.),  to 
translate  the  Bible  into  the  English  tongue.  Bede  died  while 
dictating  his  translation  of  the  last  verses  of  St.  John's  Gospel, 
and  Alfred  is  credited  in  later  tradition  with  having  been  a 
translator  of  the  whole  Bible.  Smith's  Diet,  of  Bible,  Art. 
Auth.  Vers.,  p.  1665.  The  Ormulum,  too,  is  a  specimen  of 
the  work  done  in  this  direction.  John  Wycliffe,  D.D.,  the 
English  Heresiarch,  and  lovingly  called  "  The  Morning  Star  of 
the  Reformation  "  by  the  compatriots  and  blood-relations  in 
religion  of  my  opponents,  died  exactly  ^^  hundred  and  three 
years  ago  to-day  !  Some  time  before  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion and  before  the  Douay  translation  of  the  Bible  in  1582  and 
1609 !  He  gave  to  the  world  the  year  before  he  died  an  Eng- 
lish version  of  the  whole  Bible — perhaps  the  first  complete 
translation  into  English.  Dr.  Roberts,  member  of  the  New 
Testament  Company  of  Revisers,  says  "  it  is  possessed  of  great 
merit."  And  Wycliffe's  Version  has  this  clause  of  our  text  as 
follows:  "She  shall  trede  thy  head.''^     My   opponent   will 


A  Rksume.  35 

probably  Bay  Wycliffe  was  an  old  ignoramus,  did  not  know 
Hebrew,  and  more  especially  Lad  not  seen  the  quotation  from 
De  lioesi — "  t\iQ  famous  living  Italian  Roman  Catholic  scholar 
of  Catacomb  celebrity  !^^  How  comjilimentary  he  can  be  to 
Catholic  scholarship  when  he  thinks  it  suits  him !  It  is  so 
l)i'ofound ! 

,  ^fy  opponent  admits  the  readings  "  Ipse  "  and  "  Ipsa,"  but 
in  his  death  throes,  grasping  at  a  straw,  puts  me  to  proof  of 
the  existence  of  the  neuter  form  "Ipsum."  I  admit  this  is  my 
case — the  burden  of  proof  is  mine,  and  I  accept  it  cheerfully. 
I  will  not  let  him  go  from  the  bolt  on  which  he  is  impaled 
until  I  excoriate  him — till  he  feels  that  in  an  evil  hour  he  for- 
got  the  ethos  of  his  religious  "  school,"  and  came  to  the  succor 
of  a  Bishop,  though  probably  it  was  not  through  very  profound 
reverence  for  the  Episcopal  Otfice. 

But  to  the  proof.  The  celebrated  Jesuit  commentator,  Corne- 
lius ix  Lapide  (who  died  in  1637 — some  time  before  the  Immaeii- 
late  Conception  was  dejvned — 1854  was  that  date),  conmienting 
on  the  words  "  Ipsa  conteret  caput  tuum — She  shall  crush  thy 
head,"  says — (I  translate) :  "  The  reading  here  is  three-fold. 
The  first  is  that  of  the  Hebrew  Codices  which  have  '  Ipsum'' 
— '  It,'  to  wit,  the  seed  shrll  bruise  thy  head,  and  so  reads  St. 
Leo  (the  Great,  Pope  and  Doctor  of  the  church,  died  461,  I 
add),  and  after  him  Lipomanus.  The  second  is  '  Ipse  ' — '  He  ' 
(Christ  or  man)  shall  crush  thy  head.  So  the  Septuagint  and 
Chaldaic.  The  third  is  '  Ipsa  '— '  She  '  shall  crush  thy  head. 
So  the  Roman  Bible  and  almost  all  the  Latins  read  with  St. 
Augustine  (the  Latin  translator  of),  Chrysostom,  Ambrose, 
Gregory  (the  Great),  Bede,  Alcuin,  Bernard,  Eucherius, 
Rupert  and  others."  So  much  at  present  from  a  Lapide  on  the 
three  readings.  I  wish  to  confine  myself  first,  exhaustively  and 
overwhelmingly  to  the  proof  of  "  Ipsum,"  or  the  neuter  form, 
which  I  also  find  as  "  Hoc  " — "  This,  the  seed^''  both  simple 
pronouns  of  the  same  class,  "  //o(?"  being  the  more  emphatic. 

My  next  witness  is  Kemnitzius,  or  Chemnitz  (according  to 
modern  spelling),  probably  the  ablest  Lutheran  theologian  of 
the  period  immediately  succeeding  Luther  himself  (1522-1586). 
In  his  greatest  work,  Examen  Concilii  Tridentini,  he  says : 


30  IrsK,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

"We  should  read  Tpsmn  mnterct  caput  tiium.  It  nhall  Iruise 
thi/  head,  seeiiifj;  it  was  sj)okeii  of  tlie  seed,  which  was  Christ, 
as  ancient  writers  teach."  I  take  this  from  Ward's  ^'^  Errata  of 
the  Protestant  Bihle^''  a  work  of  the  very  higlicst  authority. 
Ward  himself  was  a  man  of  marvellous  linguistic  attaimnents 
and  an  unfortunate  "  pervert  to  Rome,"  IIow(!ver,  I  believe 
when  he  "came  over"  he  was  really  quite  sane,  and  in  this 
respect,  at  all  events,  dilTered  from  those  drivelling  'Idiots^ 
Faber,  Newman,  ^Manning,  the  Will)erforces,  Allies,  ]\Iivart, 
the  Harpers,  Oakeley,  Clarke,  Shipley,  the  Bowdens, 
Caswall,  Dalgairns,  Ryder,  Coleridge,  Ward  of  the  "Dub- 
lin Review,"  the  oidy  man  in  England  John  Stuart  ^lill 
feared  or  was  influenced  by.  There  are  a  few  other  dolts 
of  the  same  capacity  as  Ripon,  Bute,  and  Hope-Scott,  whom 
the  church  is  tenderly  matronizing  and  "tis  thought  they  will 
recover.  This  by  tlie  way.  Chemnitz's  arguments  for  "  Ii'sum  " 
are  quoted  by  Cardinal  Bellarmine,  De  verho  Dei  {Lih.  2,  Cap. 
12,  13,  14).  Was  I  not  correct  in  saying  that  the  Protestant 
reading  "  It  "  came  from  a  Hebrew,  Greek  or  Latin  neuter 
gender  i  "  Our  translators,"  the  "  English  translators,"  "  the 
English  version,"  my  opponent  says,  speaking  of  the  "  Protest- 
ant Version  " — lie  scorns  the  word  "  Protestant "  evidently, 
and  will  have  none  of  it !  He  writhes  and  squirms  to  clear 
himself  from  its  hated  folds.  He  likes  it  as  little  as  one  is  said 
to  like  Holy  Water  I  The  translators  of  the  Protestant  version 
certainly  did  not  adopt  the  masculine  "  He,"  and  if  they  did 
not  reject  it,  as  I  claimed  and  asserted,  how  did  they  get  "  It  " 
from  the  Greek  masculine  autos,  if  they  followed  my  oppo- 
nent's version  of  the  Septuagint  ?  This  is  too  clear  to  need 
a  word  more. 

Again,  the  Catholic  and  "  Historic  Dublin  Review,"  Sept., 
1856,  has  a  great  article  reviewing  the  Jesuit  Professor  Passa- 
glia's  wonderful  work  on  "  The  Immaculate  Conception  of  the 
Mother  of  God,"  published  the  year  after  the  definition  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception.  The  learned  writer  says  (p.  161), 
"  the  weight  of  authority  is  in  favor  of  the  masculine  or  neuter, 
'  Ipse  '  or '  Ipsum,'  "  and  he  cites :  PassafjUa,  Par.  2,  p.  916  ei 
seq.,'  Melchior  Canus,  De  Locis  Tlieologicis,  Lib.  2,  Cap.  15 ; 


A  IIe8umk.  87 

De  Ruheis  in  App.  de  Var.  Zed.  V.  T.,  p.  207,  seq.  Vol.  4, 
and  Cardiiiiil  Piitrizi's  great  woi-k,  "  De  Immacuhita  Markie 
Orhj'me  a  Deo pvaedicia  Disquixitlo.  lioinae,  1853."  Two 
Dominicans  and  two  .Tosuits!  Does  it  not  l)ring  a  blush  of 
indignation  to  the  cold,  pale  cheek  of  logic  and  truth,  to  hear 
an  Anglican  Bishop  hacked  uj)  hy  a  I^rKiTANicAL  Syncketist 
vcleped  "  Priest,"  declare  that  "Ipsa"  is  a  misprint,  that  the 
Inunufuiate  Conception  is  founded  upon  it,  and  that  all  sorts 
of  idolatries  and  impious  jugglery  have  been  and  are  being 
wrought  by  it — and  here  we  have  two  great  Jesuit  priests,  in 
the  shallowest  convolution  of  whose  brain  the  Bishop  and  his 
Yicar  nn'ght  he  stowed  away — we  have  these  two — one  of 
whom,  Passaglia,  was  called  "the  Theologian  of  the  Immacu- 
late Conception" — declaring,  one  hefore  the  definition  of  the 
dogma,  and  the  other  after.,  that  "  Ipsa  "  had  nothing  at  all 
to  do  with  it,  but  that  "Ipse"  or  "Ipsum,"  critically  speaking, 
was  a  more  correct  reading ! ! !  O  for  a  few  liours  before  a 
New  Brunswick  Pan-Anglican  Synod  to  discuss  the  Preroga- 
tives, Dignity  and  Pelation  to  her  Divine  Son  of  the  ever  Im- 
maculate, Glorious,  and  Sublime  Virgin  Mother,  with  Passa- 
glia and  Patrizi,  "  St.  Liguori "  and  "  The  Paccolta  "  on  the 
table ! 

Have  I  not  proved  the  existence  and  currency  of  the  reading 
"Ipsum"?  A  little  more,  however.  Dr.  Pusey  was  "kicking 
up  some  shines"  in  1804  (the  " /i«Ve/u*cwi "  period),  and  getting 
oflf  some  of  those  inconsequent  utterances  for  which  he  was  so 
fatuously  famous  in  his  later  years,  and  in  this  very  connection. 
The  Duhlhi  Revieiv,  then  Cardinal  Wiseman's  organ,  had  an 
article  on  "  The  Blessed  Virgin  and  Apostolic  Tradition,"  in 
which  Genesis  iii.  15,  occurred.  In  a  note  at  the  bottom  of  the 
page,  the  writer  (was  it  Wiseman?)  says:  "/j!  makes  no  differ- 
ence., lohatever,  to  the  force  of  the  Protevanyeliuin.,  as  an  argu- 
nnentfor  Mary's  exaltation.,  tohether  we  read '  Ipsa  '  or  '  Ipsum,' 
which  latter  loe  ourselves  helieve  to  he  the  true  reading.  Let 
Dr.  Pxisexj.,  therefore.,  not  raise  an  outcrxj  which  has  no  mean- 
ingP  I  shall  invoke  this  later,  my  readers.  Please  keep  it 
sharply  m  mind. 

Now  for  a  nightcap  for  the  Bishop  and  his  Vicar !     I  hold 


38  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

in  ray  liand  "  Biblia  Sacra  sive  Testamentum  Yetus  ah  Im. 
TremelUo  et  Fr.  Junius  ex  Ilebraeo  Latine  redditum  et  Tes- 
tamentum Novum  a  Theod.  Beza  e  Graeco  in  Latinum 
Versum:  The  Holy  Bible  or  Old  Testament  rendered  into 
Latin  from  the  Hebrew  by  Emmanuel  Tremellius  and  Francis 
Junius  and  the  New  Testament  translated  from  Greek  into 
Latin  by  Theodore  Beza."  Tremellius  and  Junius  were  pro- 
fessors at  Heidelberg  (the  former  a  converted  Jew),  and  they 
brought  out  their  Old  Testament  at  Frankfort,  in  1597.  This 
is  the  Version  from  which  the  courteous  Mr.  Campbell  quoted, 
and  I  am  happy  to  "ive  him  this  information  in  lieu  of  the 
"  fitting  reply  "  which  the  Bishop  failed  to  make  to  my  indict- 
ment. He  has  my  sympathy  in  his  disappointment !  In  this 
Bible  the  clause  in  question  runs  thus :  " Hoc  conteret  t'lbi 
caput:  This  (the  seed)  shall  bruise  thy  head" — as  good  as  any 
can  desire — as  good  as  "  Ipse,"  "  Ipsa,"  or  "  Ipsum."  "  This 
translation  is  preferred  by  the  English  Protestants,"  says  a  high 
ftuthority — Rev.  Alban  Butler,  Lives  of  the  Saints,  vol.  3,  p. 
804,  N.,  and  this  alone  may  account  for  "  It  "  in  the  Protestant 
Yersion. 

Again,  refer  to  the  annotations  to  the  Douay  Bible  on  this 
text,  and  what  do  you  find  ?  "  Ipsa  "  or  "  Ipsum,"  and  the 
remark :  "  The  sense  is  the  same  ;  for  it  is  hy  her  seed,  Jesus 
Christ,  that  the  woman  crushes  the  serpents  headP 

I  think  our  readers  will  now  concede  that  I  have  jiroved  my 
case  so  far  as  "  Ipsum  "  goes,  and  answered  my  opponent's 
question.  I  can  better  this ;  but  "  enough  is  as  good  as  a  feast." 
My  opponent  admits  the  existence  and  currency  of  "  Ipse  " 
and  "  Ipsa,"  and  I  presume  we  can  now  treat  "  Ipse,"  "  Ipsa," 
and  "  Ipsum  "  as  more  or  less  authorized  readings.  Alas !  now, 
for  the  Bishop's  little  diagram  of  '"''Ipse — Ipsa,^''  and  his  silly 
story  in  connection  with  it.  It  reminds  me  of  that  well-known 
method  in  German  philosophy  :  first  set  things  on  their  heads, 
and  then  anmse  yourself  at  seeing  them  unable  to  walk  I  I 
wonder  if  the  Bishop  is  an  adept  ? 

And  now  an  independent  word  on  "  Ipsa,"  supererogatory 
indeed,  o  far  as  the  necessities  of  my  argument  stand,  but 
yet  furnishing  a  peg  for  some  tattooing  remarks.     I  confoi^s 


A  Resume.  39 

this  is  to  me  an  enticing  part  of  the  discussion.  It  brings  to 
mind  the  grand  old  Yulgate  of  the  Catholic  Church,  whose 
history  would  require  a  small  volume.  Its  text  is  a  composite, 
eclectic  one,  so  to  speak,  formed  by  the  fusion  of  the  old  Italic 
and  Latin  versions  in  use  in  the  Western  Church  before  St. 
Jerome,  and  Jerome's  translation.  It  needs  no  apology  from 
me,  for  it  remains  to-day  the  most  important  means  at  our 
command  for  the  final  settlement  of  many  critical  questions 
connected  with  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  Scriptures.  This  is  the 
testimony  of  the  ablest  Protestant  critics — Grotius,  Cappell, 
Mills,  Walton,  Roberts,  and  others.  "  Jerome's  old  Yulgate," 
says  my  opponent,  "  made  direct  from  the  Hebrew,  has  the 
masculine  'Ipse' — the  modern  Vulgate  in  spite  of  this  has 
'Ipsa.'"  Yes,  but  lie  overlooks  the  fact  that  the  reading 
"  Ipsa  "  of  the  present  Vulgate  is  older  than  St.  Jerome's  read- 
ing "  Ipse."  When,  therefore,  my  opponent  say  that  "  the 
translators  of  the  modern  Yuhjate,^''  as  he  calls  them,  "  are 
loithout  excuse  in  axlopting  '  Ipsa,'  more  especially  as  they  had 
the  grand  old  Vulgate  of  St.  JeroDie  before  their  eyes  to  keep 
them  right,^''  he  talks  arrant  nonsense.  He  puts  the  cart  be- 
fore the  horse.  'Tis  St.  Jerome  who  is,  in  this  particular,  with- 
out excuse  for  attempting  to  make  the  change  from  "  Ipsa  "  to 
"Ipse";  and  St.  Augustine,  his  great  friend,  and  St.  Ambrose, 
two  giants  (with  others  mentioned  above  by  Cornelius  a,  Lapide) 
told  him  so,  and  refused  to  give  up  their  old  love  "  Ipsa  "  for 
St.  Jerome's  "  Ipse,"  and  they  have  been  sustained  down  to 
this  very  hour.  In  this  connection  let  me  state  a  remarkable 
fact,  with  an  interesting  episode,  showing  the  relation  of  the 
present  Vulgate,  as  well  to  the  Old  Italic  or  Vulgate  and  its 
sources,  as  to  St.  Jerome's  Vulgate,  and  showing,  too,  the 
tenor  of  tradition  in  affecting  and  determining  that  relation. 

The  Greek  word  epiousios — meaning  '''■  daily, ^'  the  Latin 
"  Quotidiamim,^^ — is  found  in  the  New  Testament  only  in  the 
petitions  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  as  given  both  by  St.  Matthew 
vi.,  ii.,  and  St.  Luke  xi.  3.  The  Old  Latin  Version  trans- 
lates epiousios  by  "  quotidianum — daily,"  in  both  Gospels,  and 
it  is  rendered  "  daily "  in  both  Gospels  in  the  Protestant  Ver- 
sion.   When  St.  Jerome  revised  the  Latin  of  the  New  Testa- 


40  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

ment,  lie  substituted  "supersubstantialem — supersubstantial "  for 
"  quotidianuin — daily  "  in  St.  Mattbew,  but  apparently  in  doubt 
about  his  correctness  be  left  "  quotidianuni — daily  "  in  St.  Luke, 
and  GO  it  stands  in  the  Yulgate  to-day  and  in  the  Douay  trans- 
lation. But  the  "  quotidianuni — daily  "  of  the  old  Latin  main- 
tained, and  still  maintains,  its  place  in  the  church  service  book 
and  offices,  in  the  Liturgies — Roman,  Galilean,  Ambrosian  and 
Mozarabic  —  in  the  celebrated  catechism  of  the  Council  of 
Trent  even,  and  in  the  private  devotions  of  Catholics  to-day. 
They  know  no  other,  I  may  say.  It  is  the  remnant  of  a  Ver- 
sion older  than  St.  Jerome's,  as  "  Ipsa  "  is  such  another  rem- 
nant, and  although  Jerome's  revision  in  this  particular  is  the 
reading  of  the  Yulgate  to-day,  it  has  been  powerless  to  dis- 
place the  ante-Jerome  "  quotidianuni — daily."  I  ought  to  point 
out  that  both  words  appear  together  in  that  inexpressibly  beau- 
tiful Post-Communion  prayer  of  St.  Bonaventure,  beginning : 
"  Transfige  Dulcis  sime  Domine  Jesu,"  etc.  The  application 
here,  however,  is  purely  Eucharistic  and  refers  solely  to  the 
holy  and  adorable  Sacrament  of  the  altar. 

Anent  these  words  a  tilt  took  place  between  Abelard  and 
St.  Bernard.  The  Saint  having  occasion  to  visit  the  convent 
of  the  Paraclete,  of  which  Heloise  was  Abbess,  observed  that 
in  repeating  the  Lord's  prayer  at  the  daily  hours  a  change  was 
made  in  the  usual  form,  the  word  "  supersubstantialem ''  being 
substituted  for  "  quotldianum  "  in  St.  Matthew's  gospel.  St. 
Bernard  forbade  Heloise  to  adopt  the  former  word.  As 
Heloise  had  made  this  change  under  the  direction  of  Abelard, 
she  told  him  of  the  prohibition,  and  thereupon  Abelard  wrote 
a  letter  of  defense  to  St.  Bernard,  which  is  extant.  The 
result  was  that  the  innovation  was  disallowed,  and  "  quotidi- 
anuni— daily  "  once  more  rang  through  the  cloisters  of  the  Para- 
clete. See  Canon  Lightfoot  on  Revision,  etc.  "  Ipsa  "  is  the 
reading  of  the  Vulgate  to-day — "the  best  Version  of  all  those 
that  have  come  down  to  us  from  antiquity."  These  are  the 
words  of  Scott  Porter ;  Canon  Westcott,  in  Smith's  "  Diet,  of 
the  Bible,"  is  almost  as  strong,  and  they  are  certainly  confirmed 
by  the  action  of  the  Protestant  Revisers  a  little  while  ago. 
They  made  several  startling  corrections  in  accordance  with  the 


A   ItESUME.  41 

Yulgate.  Let  me  give  a  very  important  one — tliey  have  re- 
stored the  true  reading  of  1  Cor.  xi.  27.  For  200  years,  to 
fasten  on  Catliolics  the  cliarge  of  "  mangling  tlie  sacrament,"  as 
they  put  it,  tliey  read  this  text  conjunctively:  "Whosoever 
shall  eat  the  bread  a7id  drink  the  cup,  etc."  This  they  did  to 
infer  a  necessity  and  obligation  for  the  laity  as  for  the  ])riest  to 
f  communicate  under  both  kinds,  as  the  conjunctive  '*  a;uZ"  may 
seem  to  do.  The  Revisers  have  done  an  act  of  justice  to 
Catholics  by  restoring  the  true  reading — "w  drlnk,^^  and  thus 
removed  a  corruption  which  Dean  Stanley  owned  was  due  •■'  to 
theological  fear  or  partiality."  Other  great  tributes  to  the 
Yulgate  I  cannot  stay  to  chronicle  now,  without  expanding  the 
letter  too  much. 

This  is  not,  as  I  said  before,  the  place  to  argue  nice  questions 
of  Textual  Criticism  and  Biblical  Hernieneutics,  but  I  cannot 
allow  some  very  crude  and  shallow  statements  of  my  oppo- 
nent to  pass  without  correction.  He  must  admit,  that  it  is  now 
absolutely  impossible  to  determine  from  the  Ilcl)rew  text 
direct,  without  merely  speUing  it  out  and,  us  he  thinks 
inferentially,  whether  the  pronoun  is  masculine,  feminine,  or 
neuter.  71us  I  have  already  proved  by  the  testimony  of  Car- 
dinals Bellarmine  and  J>aroiiius.  There  can  be  no  stronger. 
We  have  no  Hebrew  text  older  than  the  Wi  centiirxj.  My 
opponent,  however,  labors  to  show  that  because  the  verb  "  con- 
teret "  is  inasculine,  therefore  the  pronoun  is  masculine,  and 
that  settles  the  whole  thing.  Silly  nonsense !  Somebody  must 
have  told  him  this  in  a  joke !  What  sort  of  studies  has  he 
made  in  Textual  Criticism  within  the  last  thirty  years?  Giants 
in  scholarship  have  tried  to  determine  this  very  point,  and 
have  so  far  failed.  Why  should  Liliputs  presume !  He  ought 
to  know  that  it  is  common  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  idiomatic, 
indeed,  in  certain  cases,  to  have  pronouns  and  verbs  of  the 
mascuhne  gender  joined  with  nouns  of  the  feminine,  as  in 
Kuth  i.  8;  Esther  ii.  20;  Eccles.  xii.  15.  Again,  there  are  in 
the  Pentateuch  several  places  in  which  the  masculine  pronoun 
is  used  instead  of  the  feminine,  although  the  antecedent  is  a 
noun  feminine;  and  this  construction,  I  read,  occurs  so  fre- 
quently that  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  it  proceeded 


42  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

from  the  original  author  of  the  Books.  See  Kennicott's  Bible 
in  loco  for  the  authorities  touching  the  two  celebrated  texts :  Gen- 
esis XX.  5,  and  Genesis  xxiv.  44 ;  also  Porter's  Bib.  Criticism.  I 
speak  on  authority,  of  course,  as  I  do  not  know  Hebrew  well 
enough  to  set  up  my  own  judgment.  But  I  refer  the  Bishop 
and  his  Vicar  to  Cornelius  a  Lapide,  as  above  quoted,  where 
they  will  find  a  critical  and  exegetical  discussion  on  tliis  gram- 
matical point,  eminently  Jesuitical,  in  the  true  literal  sense  of 
the  term,  that  may  somewhat  enlarge  their  now  apparently 
very  contracted  intellectual  horizon.  A  Lapide  concludes  his 
argument  thus  (I  translate):  "  Wherefore  it  seems  to  me  that 
MosES  IX  THE  Hebrew  heke  joined  a  masculine  verb  with  a 

FEMININE    PRONOUN,    SAYING    III'ASCUPH,  '  IpSA   CONTERET 

SHE  SHALL  CRUSH,'  TO  SIGNIFY  THE  WOMAN  AS  WELL  AS  HER 
SEED,   AND    SO   THAT   THE    WOMAN   BY    AND    THROUGH    HER    SEED, 

TO  WIT,  BY  Christ,  should  crush  the  head  of  the  serpent." 
Kow  I  am  familiar  with  the  critical  literature  in  Greek  and 
Latin  touching  all  these  three  respective  readings,  and  so  pro- 
foundly convinced  am  I  (catching,  as  I  think  I  do,  *^he  very 
quintessence  of  the  idea  involved  in  the  first  clause  of  the  text), 
that  Moses  wrote  the  feminine  pronoun,  that  I  will  discuss  the 
matter  with  the  Bishop  before  a  committee  of  Protestant 
clergymen  in  this  city — say  the  Peverend  Doctors  Bennet, 
Pope,  and  Macrae,  if  these  gentlemen  will  pardon  my  using 
their  names — and  at  such  time  as  may  be  arranged,  when  I  will 
undertake  to  maintain  that  position.  I  can  lay  claim,  indeed, 
to  no  special  spiritual  perception  or  illumination  on  such  a 
matter,  but  there  is  to  my  mind  a  higher  criterion  of  genuine- 
ness than  MS.  authority.  There  is  what  Griesbach  calls  an 
"interna  bonitas";  there  is  what  Bengel  calls  an  "  adamantina 
cohaerentia,"  which,  he  says,  speaking  of  a  matter  very  like 
this,  "  compensate  for  the  scarcity  of  MSS."  These  words  are 
almost  untranslatable. 

But  1  hear  some  one  ask :  What  about  the  appalling  critico- 
cyclonic  cataclysm  on  "  Ipse  "  from  De  Rossi,  whom  my  oppo- 
nent describes  as  "  A  famous  living  Italian  Roman  Catholic 
scholar  of  catacomb-inscription  celebrity?"  Ye  Gods!  Is  it 
true,  then,  that  whom  you  would  destroy  you  first  make  mad  ? 


A  Resume.  43 

Has  this  writer  no  friends — "learned  friends"  of  conrse  I 
mean,  who,  if  they  cannot  help  him,  might  save  hiui  from — 
himself  f  Verily  "an  enemy  hath  done  this!"  Has  Bishop 
Kingdon  "sold"  his  friend?  Or  can  I  trust  mine  eyes? 
Will  it  now  be  wondered  at  that,  profoundly  distrusting  the 
honesty  of  this  writer,  I  sought  to  meet  him  face  to  face  before 
my  fellow-citizens,  where  I  could  unmask  his  presumptuous 
pretentiousness,  his  little  shifts  and  miserable  subterfuges,  and 
hold  him  up  to  the  piercing  gaze  of  every  man  who  values 
truth  more  than  empty  semblance  of  victory,  honesty  more 
than  mere  vainglorious  triumph  over  an  opponent  ?  I  believed 
him  to  be  a  master  in  the  art  of  suppression  and  misstatement, 
and,  therefore,  I  preferred  "the  limited  area  of  the  Institute" 
which  he  so  pathetically  deprecated,  the  "  Fifty  Years  of 
Europe  " — "  the  audience  fit  though  few  "  before  whom  casti- 
gation  for  dishonesty  would  be  administered  on  the  spot.  I 
am  magnanimous  enough,  however,  to  say  that  the  religious 
position  of  a  ritualistic  minister,  so-called,  is  intellectually  sim- 
ply so  contemptible  that  honesty  in  a  matter  like  this  is  too 
much  to  expect. 


LETTER  HI. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IP8UM — A   RESUME. 

To  the  Editor  of  ilie  Globe : 

Sir, — Here  is  a  writer  steeped  to  the  lips  in  vanity  and  self- 
conceit,  signing  himself  "  Priest  of  the  Mission  church  "  (and 
I  am  told  an  Oxford  graduate),  anxious  to  instruct  "  IJiblical 
students,"  barefacedly  pretending  to  speak  with  knowledge  of 
and  to  quote  from  a  learned  work  which  he  evidently  never 
saw,  and  about  which  he  by  his  own  confession — hahemus  con- 
Jitentein  reum — knows  absolutely  nothing !  No,  not  even  the 
name  of  the  author !  Good  Heaven  1  The  great  and  saintly 
Father  John  Bernard  De  Rossi,  of  Parma,  "  the  last  of  the 
Tribunes"  of  that  period  in  Sacred  Criticism  brought  back 


44  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

from  Heaven  and  by  a  new  ritualistic  theory  of  Metempsycho- 
sis transformed  into  the  great  CathoHc  Archaeologist,  Commeii- 
datore  G.  B.  De  Rossi,  now  at  Home,  aged  about  sixty-five ! — 
and  this  by  the  "Priest  of  the  Mission  church!"  Oh,  no! 
Thaumat  gist  though  he  fain  would  be  thought,  he  cannot 
hope  to  d'  what  the  Pope  and  the  whole  college  of  cardinals 
could  not  do !  The  humble  Priest  and  Professor,  the  learned 
Hebraist,  the  pet  and  pride  and  darling  of  Pope  Pius  \I.  and 
all  Europe  for  his  Biblical  scholarship,  who  spent  his  life  and 
fortune  in  collecting  MSS.  and  rare  editions  of  the  Hebrew 
texts,  for  which  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  in  vain,  offered  him  an 
enormous  price,  and  which  Pius  VI.  delicately  proposed  to  buy 
for  the  Vatican,  but  which  De  Rossi  bequeathed  to  the  library 
of  his  native  city, — to  attempt  to  rob  him  of  all  his  glory,  and 
by  the  "  Priest  of  the  Mission  church  ! "  Fie !  O  Fie !  1  may 
well  say  to  him  with  Prince  Hal :  "  What  trick,  what  device, 
what  starting  hole  canst  thou  now  find  out  to  hide  thee  from 
this  open  and  apparent  shame  ? "'  To  conscientious  readers  of 
these  letters  I  say :  Thrust  this  slmfiiing  witness  out  of  court, 
and  if  you  seriously  wish  to  know  the  teachings  of  the  Catholic 
church  on  any  question,  go  to  some  duly  accredited  exponent 
of  her  doctrine,  and  not  to  a  man  who  has  shown  himself  to  be 
one  of  those  of  whom  St.  Leo  observes  in  forcible  terms  that 
"  they  have  made  themselves  makers  of  error  because  they 
would  not  become  the  disciples  of  truth."  To  "  Biblical  stu- 
dents "  let  me  say  that  De  Rossi  published  this  volume  just 
one  hundred  years  ago  this  very  year,  as  an  aj^pendlx  to  Dr. 
Kennicott's  great  Hebrew  Bible,  and  a  fifth  volume  in  1798-9 
and  he  died  in  1831.  Now,  if  it  in  the  remotest  way  affected 
my  position,  or  the  state  of  the  question  at  issue,  I  could  not 
safely  accept  a  quotation  from  De  Rossi  by  my  opponent — I 
would  not  trust  liim.  But  it  just  plays  my  hand — it  establishes 
by  strong  evidence  the  currency  of  the  third  reading,  "  Ipse."' 
This  was  a  part  of  my  case — to  establish  the  fact  of  three  read- 
ings, not  two  only  as  the  Bishop  and  his  Vicar  alleged. 

Let  me  dispose  of  De  Rossi  while  I  have  him  in  hand.  My 
opponent  quotes  him  as  saying:  "The  masculine  reading  is 
better,  by  which  the  bruising  of  the  serpent  is  ascribed  imme- 


A  Resumk.  40 

dlately  and  alone  to  the  Seed  of  the  woman,  and  from  wltich 
the  redemption,  power  and  divinity  of  the  Messiah  are  ph\inly 
elicited."  Perfectly  Catholic  doctrine,  and  exactly  my  position 
stated  in  my  first  letter  and  repeated  often  in  this.  Where 
does  the  comfort  for  my  opponent  and  the  Bishoj  come  in  ? 
The  masculine  reading  may  be,  verbally  and  critieally  speak- 
ing, the  best — we  are  not  now  discussing  that — and,  no  doubt, 
this  is  what  De  Rossi  meant,  and  clearly  enough  said,  too,  had 
we  his  words  before  us  in  the  original ;  for  as  I  shall  make 
very  clear  directly,  whether  we  read  Ipse,  Ipsa  or  Ipsum,  the 
result  and  meaning  is  absolutely  the  same — that  is  to  say,  the 
Ijruising  or  crushing  of  the  serpent  is  ascribed  immediately 
and  alone  to  Christ,  and  its  whole  si(jnificance  for  us  comes 
from  His  Redemption^  Power  and  Dimnity.  This  is  the 
pure  Catholic  doctrine  with  which  I  have  all  through  scalded 
my  opponents;  and  will  anybody  believe  that  the  genuine 
"  Father  "  De  Rossi  did  not  know  it  and  hold  it,  too '{  Yes, 
thank  God  !  A  Priest  of  the  Catholic  Church  can  never  pub- 
licly deny  her  tenets  and  at  the  same  time  claim  to  be  in  full 
communion  with  her,  and  to  teach  doctrines  whose  true  and 
logical  home,  if  they  are  worth  anything  at  all,  is  eUeiohere  ! 
Can  I  point  out  to  the  writer  in  clearer  terms  the  contradic- 
tions and  confusion  in  which  he  involves  himself,  and  those 
who  fatuously  follow  him,  by  persisting  in  his  concentrated 
calumnies  against  the  Catholic  Church  and  her  teaching  in  this 
particular  ?     But  more  anon. 

Again  De  Rossi  is  quoted :  "  The  present  reading  of  the 
Yulgate  ought  to  be  amended  by  the  authority  of  the  church." 
Good  Catholic  sentiment  again  !  I  had  already  anticipated  it 
when  I  said,  in  my  first  letter,  that  "I  as  a  Catholic  have  no 
more  interest  in  retaining 'Ipsa' — She  in  the  text  than  he 
(Bishop  Kingdon)  has,  so  far  as  the  Immaculate  Conception  is 
concerned,  and  that  if  it  be  found  that '  It'  or  'He'  and  not 
'She'  is  the  true  reading  the  correction  will  no  doubt  be 
made."  De  Rossi's  words  just  quoted  very  well  interpret  and 
explain  his  view  of  the  whole  matter,  and  put  it  exactly  in  ac- 
cord with  "  the  pure  Catholic  doctrine  "  spoken  of  above.  The 
proud  boast  of  the  Catholic  church  is  that  in  matters  of  doc- 


46  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

trine  affecting  God's  sacred  truth  she  is  semper  eadem — To-day, 
Yesterday  and  Forever  the  same.  Will  anyone  believe  that  a 
verital)le  and  loyal  priest  of  that  church,  in  suggesting  a  merely 
verbal  change  in  a  certain  document  in  her  custody,  meant  to 
charge  her  witli  doctrinal  error  which  he  proposed  to  correct 
by  the  change  ?  Bah !  Tell  that  to  the  marines.  De  Rossi, 
as  a  learned  priest,  knew  quite  well,  as  we  do  now,  that  his  pro- 
posed change  made  no  difference  in  the  sense,  but  as  a  stickler 
for  critical  nicety  and  absolute,  literal  correctness,  merely  for 
its  own  sake,  he  hoped  the  churcli,  in  which  he  expressly  rec- 
ognized the  power,  would  make  the  change.  Now  Bible  revi- 
sion is  not  made  every  day  in  the  church  of  God  for  a  merely 
verbal  whim,  but  Pius  VI.  might  have  obliged  his  friend  De 
Rossi  by  making  the  change  just  as  a  delicate  compliment  to 
liis  great  industry  in  collecting  MSS. !  It  would  not  have 
made  the  slightest  difference  doctrinally  speaking,  and  De 
Rossi  would  have  been,  what  he  no  doubt  was,  a  devout 
believer  in  the  Immaculate  Conception  all  the  same,  and  long 
before  it  was  defined  ;  and,  besides,  the  pardonable  vanity  of  a 
pious  enthusiast  in  merely  verbal  perfection  would  have  been 
gratified  by  the  Pope's  adopting  his  proposed  emendation. 
Pius  VI.,  however,  was  not  much  of  "  a  ti'ue  Catholic  (Caw- 
tholic)  Christian  "  anyhow,  and  it  would  appear  that  the  good 
De  Rossi's  pet  wish  was  not  gratified,  and  the  Vulgate  remains 
in  statu  quo. 

Anent  De  Rossi  my  opponent  again  says :  "  Here  then  is 
overwhelming  evidence  of  the  accuracy  of  our  translators  of 
the  Bible  in  this  particular."  What  must  our  readers  think  of 
such  diisgraceful  muddling  up  of  the  question  to  be  discussed  ? 
More  than  once  have  I  pointed  out  that  we  were  not  discussing 
the  relative  merits  of  readings  or  versions,  and  yet  at  every 
turn  my  opponent  tries  his  dodging  and  shuffling,  but  his  Pro- 
tean dishonesty  will  not  save  him  from  the  scorn  of  all  fair 
men.  Now,  while  unfortunately  for  him  and  the  Bishop  the 
whole  question  over  which  they  have  made  such  hideous 
grimaces  is,  as  I  shall  further  re-state,  the  veriest  verbal  quillet, 
yet  is  it  not  the  most  solemn  trifling  with  the  intelligence  of 
their  readers  to  say  that  "  It,"  the  actual  Protestant  reading, 


A  Resume.  47 

and  "  He  "  are  identical  as  words  I  Of  course,  I  offer  no  crit- 
icism on  the  Jilleged  quotation  from  De  Rossi.  Did  the  logical 
requirements  of  this  argument,  however,  permit  it,  I  could  very 
interestingly  discuss  the  value  of  some  of  the  MSS.  mentioned 
when  compared  with  those  in  favor  of  the  other  two  readings, 
Ipsa  and  Ipsum.  Such  a  course  on  my  part  would  very  prop- 
erly be  taken  as  an  insult  by  readers  who  have  a  right  to  expect, 
and  I  think  demand  from  me  a  logical  treatment  of  the  subject 
in  hand. 

I  will  bunch  the  balance  of  his  last  letter  with  the  first 
directly. 

To  sum  up,  I  have  now  proved  beyond  cavil,  I  think,  the 
existence  of  the  three  readings — Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum.  The  con- 
troversy over  them  between  Catholics  and  Protestants,  learned 
men  on  both  sides  have  long  since  repudiated  as  unmeaning 
and  useless.  It  possesses  interest  and  importance  as  a  question 
of  Biblical  criticism  only,  and  that  of  the  lower  kind,  but  it  in 
no  way  affects  any  truth  of  Revelation  or  any  matter  of  Catho- 
lic doctrine,  because,  when  properly  understood,  tlie  sense  is 
the  same  to  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike,  to  the  Catholic  at  all 
events,  which  is  now  the  important  point. 

I  beg  my  readers  to  keep  clearly  in  mind  that  the  battle- 
ground is  the  first  word  of  the  second  clause  of  the  text.  Gen- 
esis iii.  15,  to  wit :  He,  She  or  It  shall  bruise  or  crush  thy 
head. 

Now  my  case  against  the  Bishop  and  his  Vicar  requires,  to 
be  submergingly  complete,  that  I  prove,  that  according  to 
Catholic  teaching  and  authority  there  is  absolutely  no  difference 
in  meaning  between  the  three  readings.  I  have  already  often 
stated  the  fact.     Now  to  the  proof. 

My  first  witness  will  be  Cornelius  a  Lapide  already  quoted. 
I  translate  :  '''•Note  in  ilie  first  'place,  tJiat  none  of  these  three 
readings  is  to  he  rejected  /  on  the  contrary  they  are  all  trueP 

Tirinus — Commentary  on  the  Old  and  New  Testament — 
speaks  of  the  three  readings  and  then  says :  '■''Sed  in  idem  redit 
— but  it  amounts  to  the  same  thing." 

Suarez  (1617),  of  whom  the  admirable  and  celebrated  Protest- 
ant philosopher  Grotius  wrote :  "  So  profound  a  philosopher  and 


48  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsim. 

tlieologian  that  it  would  be  hardly  possible  to  find  his  equal" 
— Suarez  says,  in  speaking  of  the  three  read  in  js :  "  Sensus 
tcaner  idem  est — Notwithstanding  (the  three  readings)  the 
sense  comes  to  the  same  thing."  The  lovers  of  Mary  in  paitic- 
ular  owe  the  deepest  gratitude  to  tiie  truly  illustrious  and  re- 
vered name  of  Suarez ;  for  the  whole  body  of  Marian  doctrine 
has  never  been  drawn  out  with  a  fulness  and  accuracy  com- 
mensurable with  that  exhibited  in  his  second  volume  on  the 
Incarnation.  Could  I  be  fairly  charged  with  a  design  or  a 
desire  •  to  seethe  the  kids  in  tlieir  mother's  milk,"  if  I  were  to 
recommend  to  the  Bishop  and  his  Vicar  a  brain-bath  in  this 
volume,  with  frequent  douches  thereafter  for  those  parts  of  their 
cranial  anatomy  that  remained  morbidly  sensitive  on  the  quan- 
tum of  honor  due  the  Blessed  Mother  ? 

I  here  beg  publicly  to  thank  my  dear  friend  and  old  teacher. 
Father  Dixon  of  Newcastle,  for  the  use  of  Suarez.  He  sent  it 
me  after  he  had  seen  my  letter  in  the  papers,  and  in  confirma- 
tion of  my  position.  I  am  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  to  turn 
it  to  account  in  this  connection.  He  is  absolutely  the  only 
"  learned  friend  "  who  has  bothered  himself  about  me.  Doubt- 
less, those  of  them  who  know  me  think  I  can  be  safely  trusted 
with  such  a  theological  choice  as  this. 

Again  :  I  have  in  my  hand  the  great  work — De  Divina  Tra- 
ditlone  et  Scrq)tura:  On  Divine  Tradition  and  Scripture — 
by  perhaps  the  greatest  theologian  to-day  in  the  Church,  the 
Jesuit  Cardinal  Franzelin.  Ttmching  Ipsa  and  Ipse  he  says : 
TJie  truth  tawjht  ly  doth  is  the  same,  p.  536. 

Again :  Ward's  Errata  says :  "  Whether  we  read  '  She  ' 
shall  hruise,  or,  '  Iler  seed  ' — that  is  her  Son,  Christ  Jesus,  \oe 
attribute  no  more,  or  no  less  to  Christ,  or  to  his  Mother,  hy  this 
reading  or  ly  that^ 

Let  me  add  to  those  authorities  our  own  Archbishop  O'Brien 
in  his  marvellously  beautiful  little  book  "  Mater  Admirabilis." 
I  can  quote  twenty  more  to  same  effect,  but  enough. 

The  tide  has  long  since  risen  above  their  heads,  submerged 
and  engulfed  my  opponents,  but  I  feel  bound  to  sliow  how 
outrageously  wicked  and  malicious  the  Vicar  can  be  in  his  dis- 
regard of  all  logic,  and  the  violation  of  all  the  laws  of  manly 


A  Resume.  49 

and  straightforward  polemic.  Hitherto  my  criticism  lias  been, 
from  the  exigencies  of  my  case,  mainly  constructive,  but  here- 
after I  shall  turn  my  attention  to  destructive  work,  and  though 
the  material  in  ray  path  is  abundant  I  will  not  loiter. 


LETTER  IV. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   KESUMii. 

To  the  Editw  of  the  Globe  : 

Sir, — The  argument  on  the  main  question  is  finished,  and  I 
might  here  rest  my  case,  satisfied,  indeed,  that  I  have  fairly " 
accomplished  the  task  imposed  upon  me  by  Bishop  Kingdon's 
wild  statements,  illustrated  by  his  little  diagram,  and  his 
Yicar's  cachinations  in  support  thereof.  I  have  met  my  oppo- 
nents— 

"  dareful,  beard  to  beard, 
And  beat  them  backward  home." 

The  Yicar  has,  however,  so  encrusted  the  matter  with  irrele- 
vant rubbish  that  might  mislead  the  general  Protestant  public, 
and  dim  the  clear  impression  I  have  sought  to  give,  that  I 
crave  the  patience  of  my  readers  while  I  disengage  it  from  this 
encnistment. 

Complaints  have  been  made  against  me  that  I  have  been 
imduly  severe  in  my  language  to  "  educated  English  gentle- 
men holding  the  Orders  of  the  Church  of  England."  Now  I 
said  nothing  about  that  apocryphal  entity  known  as  the 
"  Orders  of  the  Church  of  England,"  but  as  to  the  "  educated 
English  gentlemen  " — well,  I  had  always  been  taught  that  edu- 
cation and  station  had  their  obligations — their  duties  as  well 
as  their  rights.  Nohlesse  oblige,  my  opponents  and  their  apol- 
ogists should  remember.  My  walks  in  life  have  been  suffi- 
ciently varied  to  give  me  some  idea  of  ecclesiastical  brawling 
and  blackguardism  in  regard  to  the  Catholic  church,  her  teach- 
ing and  her  institutions.     I  have  on  my  table  a  work  of  606 


50  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

pages,  entitled  "  The  Varii  tions  of  Popery,"  l)y  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Edgar,  an  Anglican  clergyman  in  my  own  dear  Ireland.  I 
dip  into  this  now  and  then  when  my  hrain  is  sluggish  and  in 
need  of  a  tonic,  when  1  wish  to  indulge  in  that  elan  (Iere,y)}'it 
which,  from  a  merely  natural  and  intellectual  standpoint,  floods 
my  mind  and  heart  at  the  very  thought  that  I  am  a  "  Papist " 
— and  hy  the  pure  mercy  of  God.  But  who  cotnmenced  the 
"offensive"  in  this  discussion?  Did  I  not  treat  Bishop  King- 
don  with  the  utmost  courtesy  and  respect?  Turn  to  my  first 
letter  of  Nov.  2ith.  Tlie  complaints  against  me  well  illustrate 
the  truth  of  what  I  said  early  in  this  letter — "that  there  is  one 
obligation  of  honesty  and  decorum  imposed  on  a  Catholic  and 
quite  another  on  a  Protestant."  Is  it  nothing,  then,  I  ask  fair- 
minded  Protestants,  that  the  church  which  I  love  more  than 
my  life  is  accused  of  "  enormities,"  "  impieties,"  "  idolatries  " 
and  blasphemies,  and  that  I  am  personally  charged  with 
^^ accepting ^^  and  practising  the  same?  And  by  whom  ?  By 
one  of  a  so-called  religious  "  school "  (I  cannot  call  it  a  Church) 
that  in  the  face  of  history,  in  defiance  of  contemporary  decla- 
rations on  the  part  of  the  Anglican  Bishops,  and  contemporary 
decisions  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Law  Courts,  proclaims  the  iden- 
tity of  the  English  Church  of  to-day  with  the  Apostolic  Church 
and  the  pre-Keformatiou  Church  in  England,  and  maintains 
doctrines  which  are  reprobated  by  the  Bishops  and  three- 
fourths  of  the  Anglican  comnmnion,  and  iises  ceremonies  which 
are  condemned  by  its  formularies,  and  prayers  which  are  de- 
clared blasphemous  and  rites  which  are  declared  idolatrous ! 
At  present  I  refrain  from  illustrating  these  statements  for  my 
Protestant  fellow-citizens  by  an  account  of  what  took  place  in 
London  at  the  funeral  of  a  leading  Ritualist  recently  deceased. 
Yet  in  the  face  of  all  this  I  do  not  forget  the  Christo-centric 
teaching  of  patience  and  self-denial  i7t:  .-•  ";\'-;;'.ts,  nor  yet  His 
own  example  in  dealing  with  the  desecrators  of  the  Temple. 
He  was  the  Prince  of  Peace,  but  I  ween  He  sanctioned  no 
methods  for  fo.  warding  peace  which  did  not  uphold  the 
supreme  authority  of  the  truth.  I  have  sat  at  the  feet  of  some 
of  their  ablest  lecturers  and  teachers  of  Divinity,  and  am  as 
famihar  with  the  symbolic  and  doctrinal  writings  of  the  Prot- 


A  Rksumk.  61 

estant  deuoniiimtions  as  most  laymen,  and  I  can  appeal  with 
absolute  contidence  to  hundreds  of  my  Protestant  friends  and 
associates  when  I  say,  that  I  never  in  my  life  maligned,  slan- 
dered  or  misrepresented  a  Protestant  liroiid,  ov  co/nmcncal  a 
religious  discussion.  I  do  not  like  religious  polemic,  vnd  I 
have  invariably  acted  otdy  on  the  defensive,  and  I  can  again 
appeal  to  honored  names  among  the  Protestant  clergy,  even  of 
tliis  city,  whose  friendship  I  have  the  pleasure  to  claim.  }>ly 
motto  has  ever  been,  "  Beware  of  entrance  to  a  (piarrel,"  espe- 
cially a  religious  quarrel ;  however,  I  have  just  human  nature 
enough  in  me  to  adopt  the  rest  of  this  quotation  :  "  but,  being 
in  (the  quarrel),  bear  it  that  the  oi)posed  may  beware  of  thee." 
I  am  emphatically  a  man  of  peace — but  not  "  peace  at  any 
price."  1  am  not  content  that  any  theological  fraud  or 
Ijoanerges  who  chooses  shall  by  caricature,  insult,  calumny  and 
outrage  of  Catholic  belief  "  make  a  wilderness  and  call  it 
peace."  That  would  be  subordinating  tfuth  to  peace,  and  con- 
sequently traitorous.  The  distinction  between  Christ  and 
Iscariot  must  be  kept  clear  at  least  in  matters  of  religion. 

What  I  desiderate  in  Protestant  teachers  is  a  knowledge  of 
the  Catholic  doctrines  they  attack.  AYe  will  then  have  less  of 
the  wild  figments  of  hysterical  imaginations  and  pandemonium 
caricatures  of  beliefs  in  defence  of  which  the  mightiest  intellects 
that  ever  adorned  our  race  have  found  their  highest  sphere, 
and  of  which  genius  allied  with  sanctity  have  ever  been  the 
most  persuasive  and  enthusiastic  exponents. 

In  this  discussion  I  ask  no  quarter  from  my  opponents — I 
will  give  none.  On  them  I  will  have  no  mercy,  controver- 
sially speaking;  and  I  have  about  as  much  sympathy  for  them 
as  St.  Paul  felt  for  "  Alexander  the  Coppersmith,"  for  whom 
lie  desired  "  a  reward  according  to  his  works."  They  have 
both  maligned  the  Catholic  church,  and  set  oflE  their  own  sect 
in  opposition  to  their  burlesque  of  her,  but,  nevertheless,  iu 
what  I  have  hereafter  to  say,  I  will  not  "  carry  the  war  into 
Africa"  beyond  repelling  their  attack.  Beside  my  opponents 
I  have  no  quarrel  with  Anglicans  or  Anglicanism.  There  are 
niany  non-Catholic  friends  who  will  be  pained  by  my  course 
and  my  utterances  in  this  matter.     They  cannot  feel  it  more 


52  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

keenly  tlian  I  do,  but  the  fault  is  not  mine.  The  duty  of 
speaking  out  has  been  cast  upon  me  by  a  gross  and  wanton 
attack,  wholly  unprovoked  in  the  quarter  from  which  it  came. 
Common  justice,  therefore,  demands  that  the  responsibility  for 
unpleasantness  be  put  on  other  shoulders  than  mine.  So  far  as 
in  me  lies,  I  do  not  propose  "  to  hold  the  truth  of  God  in  in- 
justice." Religious  systems  are  one  thing — individuals  quite 
another,  and  individual  religious  life  I  have  ever  regarded  as 
the  most  sacred  of  things.  I  have  hundreds  of  Protestant 
friends  whom  I  resjiect  and  love,  and  to  whom,  as  man  to  man, 
I  am  much  indebted,  biit  even  in  this  so-called  Protestant  com- 
munity,  I  want  it  distinctly  understood  I  do  not  fear  them.  I 
will  defend  my  religious  creed  when  attacked,  with  their  sym- 
pathy and  approval  of  fair  play  if  I  can  get  them,  but  in  spite 
of  all,  if  I  cannot.  On  the  ])altle-lield  of  pure  theology,  science 
and  philosophy  and  not  Biblical  research  nor  mere  ritualistic 
vagaries,  must  shape  religious  polemics  in  the  future,  for  all  at 
least  who  feel  their  responsibilities  and  grasp  the  importance 
of  the  issues. 

So  mvjh  have  I  been  led  to  say  by  the  criticism — written 
and  spc-vcn — on  ray  style  of  conducting  this  controversy.  I 
must  now  hasten  to  the  work. 

"  It  is  much  more  easy,"  justly  remarks  a  writer,  "  to  catch 
popular  approval  by  the  briUiaiicy  of  an  assault,  than  to  com- 
mand it  by  the  steady  virtues  of  a  defence."  "  Error,"  says 
the  Chinese  proverb,  "  will  make  the  circuit  of  the  glo])e  while 
Truth  is  pulling  on  her  boots."  An  unscrupulous  writer  can 
make  a  statement  in  a  half-dozen  lines  which  it  wcmld  require  , 
a  volume  to  answer.  The  accusation  or  proposition  may  be 
short  and  stinging;  the  answer  is  a]3t  to  be  long  and  dull. 
Everyone  has  felt  the  truth  of  this.  Kingsley's  charge,  for 
instance,  against  the  Catholic  priesthood  is  contained  in  six  and 
a  half  lines,  and  yet  it  drew  from  Cardinal  Newman  that 
epoch-making  book,  the  "  Apologia,"  which  entombs  Kingsley's 
reputation,  and  many  other  like  things,  for  all  time.  To  com- 
pare small  things  Avith  great,  it  is  the  same  here.  The  Bishop's 
Yicar  has  made  a  number  of  statements  in  his  characteristically 
grandiose  way — hardly  07ie  of  which  is  correct.     To  make  his 


A  Resume.  53 

demolition  as  thorough  and  complete  as  any  demolition  can  be, 
I  am  obliged  to  track  him  through  all  his  sinuosities,  and  to 
expose  his  ignorance  and  recklessness,  so  that  not  one  shred  or 
tatter  of  truth  will  be  left  to  cover  his  hideous  nakedness.  It 
is  a  wearisome  affair,  but  truth  obliges  to  it,  and  I  have  no 
choice ;  but  I  will  make  the  journey  as  interesting  as  possible. 
Now,  in  my  first  letter  I  said :  "  Of  course  I  am  not  now  dis- 
cussing the  truth  of  this  doctrine  (the  Immaculate  Conception), 
but  simply  correcting  an  amazing  misconception."  Here  I  ex- 
pressly disclaimed  the  intention  of  discussing  the  doctrine,  and 
I  did  not  discuss  it — such  a  thing  was  out  of  place  then.  The 
Eishop  has  stated  that  Ipsa  was  a  misprint  for  Ipse,  altogether 
ignoring  tlie  fact  that  there  were  three  readings  in  good  form 
here.  His  Lordship's  way  of  putting  the  question  was  bad 
enough,  and  disgraceful  and  humiliating  enough  as  a  matter 
of  mere  scholarship ;  but  to  follow  it  up  with  the  statement  so 
minutely  xoorded  that  thirty-three  years  ago  such  misprint  led 
to  the  pronmlgation  of  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion by  the  Roman  Catholic  church,  was  unpardonable  in  a 
man  with  the  honors  of  the  Anglican  Episcopate  fresh  upon 
him,  and  thus  filling  a  position  where,  according  to  St.  Paul,  it 
behoveth  him  to  be  ''a  teacher":  1  Tim.  iii.  2.  In  my  inno- 
cence of  what  simple  ignorance,  iron-clad  by  prejudice  could 
do,  I  mildly  called  the  Bishop's  proposition  "  an  amazing  mis- 
conception." But  notwithstanding  St.  Paul's  injunction  again 
that  a  Bishop  "must  have  a  good  testimony  from  them  who 
are  without,"  Dr.  Kingdon  seemed  to  stick  to  it.  It  became, 
therefore,  logically  necessary  to  reduce  the  matter  to  charge 
and  counter-charge.  I  denied  point  blank  both  of  the  Bisho})'s 
assertions,  as  matters  of  fact  ^  and,  as  I  think,  proved  my  case 
even  in  my  very  first  letter,  and  hefore  there  api)eared  on  the 
scene  the  "  Priest  of  the  Mission  Chapel,"  that  "  true  Catholic 
(Caw-tholic)  Christian,"  the  new  Keeper-ix-ordinakv,  in  this 
city,  of  the  types  and  blocks  and  chromo-process  from  and  by 
which  Popery  is  ever  hereafter  to  be  printed  off ;  the  ti'adi- 
tional  fictions,  sophisms,  calumnies,  mockeries,  sarcasms  and 
invectives  with  which  Catholics  are  to  be  assailed.  In  the  lan- 
guage of  Art  he  has  now  given  us  a  "•  proof  copy."  He  no  sooner 


54  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

enters  the  lists  than,  having  told  the  Bishop  his  statement  was 
"  too  bald  and  unqualified,"  he  proceeds  to  create  an  adver- 
sary for  his  own  little  "lawn  tennis  set,"  and  launches  into 
an  attack  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception, 
the  truth  of  which  I  had  not  discussed  at  all,  because,  not  be- 
ing involved  in  the  argument  I  had  to  make  against  the 
Bishop,  I  was  logically  bound,  and  by  respect  for  the  intelli- 
gence of  my  readers,  to  disclaim  its  discussion.  He  begs  the 
question  by  calling  Ipsa  a  mistranslation,  raves  about "  the  undue 
exaltation  of  the  Holy  Virgin"  resulting  from  it,  and  walks 
straight  into  the  yawning  abyss  of  the  most  degrading  indiflfer- 
ence  to  all  logical  decency,  truth,  and  self-respect,  by  asserting 
that  "  Pope  Pius  IX.  when  promulgating  the  Dogma  in  S. 
Peter's  at  Rome,  Dec.  8,  1854,  alluded,  for  its  defence,  to  this 
very  textP  The  itahcs  are  mine.  "What  monstrous  perver- 
sion of  the  truth !  Has  this  writer  become  so  maniacal,  so 
satanized  in  his  hatred  of  the  Catholic  church,  and  the  honor 
given  our  Blessed  Lady  therein,  as  to  renounce  all  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility for  his  utterances?  Cannot  others  read  as  well  as 
he  ?  I  hold  in  my  hand  the  original  Latin  Decree  on  the  Im- 
maculate Conception  known  as  the  Bull "  Ineffabilis."  It  con- 
sists of  twenty-eight  sections.  Let  my  readers  remember  that 
I  asserted  the  importance  of  this  whole  text — Gen.  iii.  15 — to 
Protestants  and  Catholics  alike  and  for  the  same  reasons,  alto- 
gether apart  from  any  question  about  the  Immaculate  Concejv 
tion,  but  I  narrowed  down  the  discussion  to  the  frst  word  of 
the  second  clause — He,  Shk,  or  It,  shall  bruise  or  crush  thy 
head.  This  is  just  where  the  Bishop  put  the  matter  by  his 
statement,  and  this  is  just  the  very  ring-bolt  to  which  I  shall 
hold  him  and  his  Vicar.  The  first  clause — "  I  will  put  enmi- 
ties between  thee  and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed  and  her  soed  " 
— is  outside  of  our  discussion  and  altogether  irrelevant  to  it. 
Yet  it  is  the  first  clause  only  that  is  quoted  in  the  Bull  or 
Decree,  and  then  only  in  a  summary  of  Patristic  teaching  on 
the  Blessed  Mother !  It  occurs  twice  as  follows, — I  translate : 
.  .  .  .  "  but  (God)  also  raised  in  a  wonderful  manner  the 
hopes  of  our  race,  when  He  said :  '  I  will  put  enmities  be- 
tween thee  and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed  and  her  seed.'    They 


A  Resume.  65 

(the  Fathers)  have  taught  that  in  this  divine  declaration  was 
clearly  and  plainly  showed  forth  the  Merciful  Redeemer  of 
the  human  race — namely,  Jesus  Christ,  the  only  begotten  Son 
of  God,  &c.,  &c."  I  translate  from  the  Latin  only  enougli  to 
give  the  context,  and  I  point  it  exactly  as  in  the  original.  This 
is  from  the  twelfth  section  of  the  Decree.  Again,  from  the 
seventeenth  section  I  translate :  "  Then,  too,  they  (the  Fathers) 
published  their  belief  ....  that  her  (the  Blessed  Virgin's) 
coming  was  foretold  by  God  himself  on  the  occasion  when  he 
said  to  the  serpent :  '  I  will  put  enmities  between  thee  and  the 
woman.' "  Kow  this  first  clause  of  our  text  stands  in  the 
original  in  quotation  marks  just  as  I  have  given  it  and  set 
off  as  that  part  of  the  text  used,  in  both  sections.  And  so 
the  first  clause  is  used  by  the  great  Jesuit  Passaglia,  called 
"  the  Theologian  of  the  lunnaculate  Conception,"  in  his  work 
already  referred  to,  as  well  as  by  other  eminent  Catholic  writers 
on  this  doctrine  who  have  referred  to  this  text  at  all.  And 
some  eminent  theologians  do  not  use  in  their  argument  for 
the  dogma  even  the  first  clause.  I  have  before  nie  Ilurter's 
"  Dogmatic  Tlieology,"  in  three  volumes — a  work  of  the  highest 
authority.  The  author  is  to-day  a  Professor  at  the  University 
of  Innspruck,  and  a  son  of  the  illustrious  Frederick  Von 
Hurter,  called  by  Sebastian  Brunner  "  the  apostolic  historian 
of  the  XlXth  century,"  and  who,  though  a  Protestant  clergy- 
man, undertook  to  write  and  did  write,  in  £our  volumes, 
after  twenfy-four  years'  labor,  the  famous  history  of  that  great 
Pope,  Innocent  the  Third.  He  got  bis  reward  even  here — 
Faith!  For  St.  Paiil  says — '■^ Fides  est  don uin  Del :  Faith  is 
the  gift  of  God."  The  profound  studies  and  investigation  at- 
tending this  stupendous  work  led  him  into  the  fold  of  the  Cath- 
olic church.  Father  Hiirter's  volumes  are  the  text-book  in  most 
of  the  Catholic  Theological  Seminaries  throughout  the  world. 
In  his  second  volume,  page  387,  he  is  discussing  in  his  enchant- 
ing way  the  doctrine  of  the  lunnaculate  Conception,  and  says 
in  a  note — I  translate:  "Mayhap  some  one  will  look  for  an 
argument  drawn  from  Genesis  iii.  15:  I  tmll  put  enmities, 
<('('.,  which  text  Catholic  theologians  freely  use.  But  since  we 
do  not  need  this  argument,  i&c,  i&c,  cfec,"  and  he  then  passes 


66  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

to  criticisms  of  and  suggestions  about  it.  Now  in  the  face  of 
all  tins,  even  as  to  the  use  made  of  the  first  clause  of  our  text  in 
the  Decree,  does  it  not  display  in  this  Yicar  an  impudence  and 
ignorance  colossal  in  their  criminality  when  he  says  that  Pius 
IX.  alluded  "  to  this  very  text "  for  a  defence  of  the  doctrine  1 
But  let  that  pass  as  regards  the  first  clause,  with  which  I  am 
not  concerned  in  this  controversy.  What  about  the  second 
clause,  or  rather  its  first  word?  It  remains  just  as  I  have 
stated — indifferent  to  He,  She,  or  It  so  far  as  the  Immaculate 
Conception  is  concerned,  or  the  honor  paid  the  Mother  of  the 
Redeemer  by  Catholics,  and  absolutely  without  any  weight  or 
bearing,  in  the  Vicar's  sense,  on  the  pronmlgatlon  of  the  doc- 
trine by  the  Pope.  And  yet  in  a  letter  to  his  Vicar  the  Bishop 
himself  says  "  that  the  mistake  Ipsa  for  Ipse  had  acquired  a 
tremendous  importance  from  being  quoted  in  the  promulgation 
of  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  by  Pius  IX." 
Are  any  words  too  strong  to  express  the  indignation  a  Catholic 
must  feel  at  such  an  exhibition,  in  high  places,  of  absurdity 
and  silliness  so  gigantic  in  regard  to  his  religion,  and  in  persons 
who  besides  have  the  cheek  and  assurance  to  publicly  criticise, 
slander,  and  malign  it!  Does  Bishop  Kingdon  knew  Latin 
well  enough  to  read  the  Papal  Decree,  and  if — yes,  has  he  read 
it — understandingly '{  I  cannot  believe  it,  because  if  he  did 
he  would  not  be  such  a  madman  as  to  pen  such  stuff  for  the 
public.  Wh}*,  Ipsa,  as  we  are  discussing  it,  does  not  appear 
at  all  in  the  hull  or  decree  !  The  second  clause  of  our  text  is 
not  even  quoted,  properly  speaking,  but  is  only  referred  to  in- 
directly, and  the  idea  expressed  paraph  rastically,  while  the  first 
clause  is  quoted  verbatim  and  with  absolute  precision  in  quo- 
tation marks  as  I  have  given  it  above.  Here  is  the  strongest 
paraphrase  of  the  second  clause  that  occurs  in  the  decree  which 
I  gave  for  the  Bishop's  benefit,  to  wit :  "  Quae  procid  duhio 
verienatum  ejusdem  serpentis  caput  contrivH:  who  (referring 
to  Mary)  without  doubt  crushed  the  empoisoned  head  of  that 
same  serpent."  But  this  is  simply  the  idea  conveyed  by  the 
clause  itself  as  it  stands  in  the  full  text,  where  it  is  much 
stronger  as  expressed  by  the  Almighty  than  when  paraphrased 
as  in  the  decree.   Will  the  Bishop,  or  any  one  for  him,  point  out 


A  Resume.  67 

how  the  words  or  ideas  even  of  this  clause  have  acquired  such 
"  a  tremendous  importance  "  by  appearing  in  the  decree  pro- 
mulgating the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception,  so  re- 
cently ago,  when  they  had  already  been  used  and  expressed  in 
a  stronger  and  more  emphatic  and  more  authoritative  form  if 
possible  by  the  Catholic  church  herself  in  the  Old  Vulgate 
land  the  New  for  fifteen  hundred  years  before  an  Anglican 
Protestant  Bishop  or  ritualistic  Vicar  had  been  thought  of — 
except  in  the  Counsels  of  God!  Indignation  retires  before 
the  saddening  pity  evoked  by  such  reflections.  So  far  as  my 
own  personal  feeling  is  concerned,  I  rather  thank  the  Bishop 
and  his  Vicar  for  the  delight  they  have  given  me  in  making 
or  renewing  my  acquaintance  with  thoughts  so  elevating  as 
those  suggested  and  inspired  by  my  subject-matter ;  but  I  de- 
plore it  because  of  the  scandal  given  to  the  "  little  ones "  of 
their  own  flocks  who  look  to  them  for  guidance  in  spiritual 
matters — "  the  little  ones  "  wJio  don't  hnow  !  The  mild-man- 
nered and  sweet-tempered  good  "Queen  Bess,"  the  abl^est 
"  Pope  "  the  "  Church  of  England,  as  by  law  established,"  ever 
had,  used  to  say  to  her  Bishops  when  they  misbehaved : 
"  Proud  Prelate !  I  made  you  a  Bishop  and,  by  God,  I  will 
unmake ;  I  will  unfrock  you  if  you  don't  look  sharp ! " 
Green's  "  Short  History  of  the  English  People,"  p.  383,  is  ray 
authority.     What  would  she  do  in  a  case  like  this  ? 


LETTER  V. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   RESUME. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Glohe  : 

Sir, — In  very  weariness  of  spirit  and  disgust  unutterable  I 
would  turn  away  from  this  Vicar  and  his  disreputably  ignorant 
ravings ;  I  could  say  with  the  impatient  Hotspur : 

"I  had  rather  live 
With  cheese  and  garlick  in  a  windmill,  far, 
Than  feed  on  cates,  and  have  him  talk  to  me, 
In  any  summer-house  ni  Christendom." 


58  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

But  I  am  obliged  to  prove  in  detail  the  damning  charges  I 
have  thus  far  inaintained  against  him,  and  must,  therefore, 
sift  his  every  assertion.  He  complains,  he  charges  that  Pius 
IX.  set  up  in  Rome,  to  commemorate  tlie  pronmlgation  of 
the  dogma,  a  figure  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  trampling  the  ser- 
pent under  foot — "  and  without  the  holy  child,  mark  you,  in 
her  arms,"  he  emphasizes.  That  is,  he  accuses  Pius  IX.  of 
excogitating  out  of  his  own  brain  the  idea  of  such  a  figure  as 
something  brand  new  and  manufactured  pro  re  nata,  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  memorizing  the  pronmlgation  of  the  dogma, 
and  he  adds  that  "this  representation  ....  has  been  for 
years  and  still  is  very  common  among  Roman  Catholics." 
Now,  notwithstanding  the  aifectation  of  learning  and  tone  of 
confidence  of  this  writer  when  instructing  the  public  on  the 
"  enormities,"  "  impious  acts  of  worship,"  "  impious  utter- 
ances," and  "  idolatrous  devotions  "  of  "  the  Roman  church," 
his  ludicrous  and  audacious  ignorance  brand  him  as  the  most 
gigantic  fraud  in  this  community.  'Twas  a  remark  of  an  old 
Jesuit  priest  that  religion  suffered  more  from  the  sayings  and 
doings  of  '"'■  Pious  fooW''  than  from  any  of  its  open  and  pro- 
fessed enemies.  I  have  lately,  in  utter  desperation  at  his 
fatuity,  frequently  asked  myself  if  the  Bishop's  Vicar  was  one 
of  the  brotherhood !  Let  us  see.  I  have  already  explained 
the  Catholic  meaning  of  the  words — "She  sliaU  crush  thy 
head^''  etc.  Let  me  pay  him  the  compliment  of  adopting,  as 
well  and  fully  expressing  the  Catholic  doctrine,  his  own  closing 
words  in  his  last  letter — that  cataclysmal  letter  in  which  he, 
only  ignorantly^  I  would  charitably  believe,  tried  to  palm  off 
on  some  of  his  innocent  fellow-citizens  and  readers,  the  words 
of  Father  John  Bernard  de  Rossi,  who  died  57  years  ago,  as 
the  utterance  of  the  present  Catholic  Archaeologist,  Giovanni 
B.  de  Rossi,  or  liis  brother  Michael — the  "  famous  living  Italian 
Roman  Catholic  scholar  of  Catacomb-inscription  celebrity"  as 
he  alinost  hyperbolically  called  hitn,  because  lie  thought  he 
would  help  him  through  with  his  little  "  lawn  tennis  set."  The 
Vicar  writes :  "  It  was  to  the  Seed  of  the  Woman,  God  Incar- 
nate, directly  and  personally,  that  the  crushing  of  the  Serpent's 
head  was  attributed,  not  to  the  Woman  nor  to  Him  in  conjunction 


A  Resume.  6^ 

with  Her,  but  to  Him  al&ne,  and  it  is  in  Ilim  and  through 
Him,  that  all  faithful  Christians  are  enabled  to  crush  Satan 
under  their  feet  also^     The  italics  are  mine.     Wliat  is  the 
story  of  Balaam?     Verily  does  history  repeat  itself!    And 
what  does  St.  Paul  mean  when  he  says  that "  the  wrath  of  God 
is  revealed   from   Heaven  against  all  impiety  and  injustice 
of  those  men  that  detain  the  truth  of  God  in  injustice?"' 
How  very  like  the  language  of  the  old  Catholic  Saints  and 
Doctors  is  that  of  the  Vicar,  just  quoted !     For  instance,  the 
Bishop's  "unreliable"  St.  Bernard  says:  "Christ  crushed  the 
serpent's  head  by  his  death,  suffering  Himself  to  be  wounded 
in  the  heel.     His  blessed  mother  crushed  him  likewise,  by  her 
co-operation  to  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  and  by  reject- 
ing, with   horror,  the   very   first  suggestion  of  the   enemy, 
to  commit   even  the   smallest  sin."     St.  Gregory  the  Great 
{3£or.  i.  38)  says :  "  We  crash  the  serpent's  head  when  we  ex- 
tirpate from  our  heart  the  beginnings  of  temptation,  and  then 
he  lays  snares  for  our  heel,  because  he  opposes  the  end  of  a 
good  action  with  greater  craft  and  power."     I  cannot  forbear 
referring  here  to  an  injunction  my  dear,  good  Irish  mothei* 
used  to  give  me,  when  a  boy  rambling  in  the  woods,  to  always 
kill  the  first  snake  of  the  season  that  1  met  with,  and  never 
to  allow  one  to  cross  my  path — an  injunction  I  have  not  yet 
forgotten.    This  is  doubtless  the  survival  of  some  old  "  Popish  " 
superstition  which  would  seem  to  have  overmastered  even  the 
great  St,  Patrick,  and  from  whom  one  of  his  daughters  in  the 
faith  may  have  inherited  it !     Now,  I  suppose  this  writer  will 
admit  that  the  Mother  of  our  Lord  was  a  "faithful  Christian." 
He  himself  calls  her  the  "  Chief  of  Saints."     Why  then  is  it 
unlawful  for  Catholics  to  say  that  she  crushes  Satan  under  her 
feet,  in  his  own  words  just  quoted,  and  those  of  St.  Bernard 
and  St.  Gregory  ?    The  Vulgate,  Douay  and  Wycliffe's  version 
of  the  Bible  do  say  so  and  Catholics  say  so  too — and  that  is  all 
they  do  say.     Wherein  does  their  meaning,  when  properly 
understood  as  I  have  explained  it  from  these  great  Catholic 
saints,  differ  from  the  Protestant  meaning  attached,  I  trust, 
to  "  It  or  He  shall  hrtiise  thy  head  ?  "     It  differs  not  at  all. 
Christ  Jesus — the  only  name  under  Heaven  given  to  men 


60  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

whereby  they  must  be  saved — crushes  the  serpent's  head  by 
the  prowess  of  His  own  Divinity,  Power,  and  Virtue ;  His 
Blessed  Mother  and  all  other  "faithful  Christians"  in,  through, 
and  by  Him — by  giving  birth  at  once  to  her  Son  and  Kedeemer 
and  in  the  words  of  the  promulgating  Decree — "  hy  that  virtue 
with  which  she  was  endued  fi'om  on  high.''"'     Section  15, 

Why  should  not,  then,  the  representation  of  the  Blessed 
Mary,  declared  by  the  Angel  to  be  "  full  of  grace,"  and  tram- 
pling the  Serpent  under  foot  be  "very  common  among 
Roman  Catholics  " — "  true  Catholic  Christians  "  as  they  are  l 
It  "  has  been  for  years,  and  still  is  very  common,"  Le  says. 
Yes,  thanks  to  God,  and  for  more  years  than  he  seems  to  take 
in.  It  is  so  easy  for  him  to  circumscribe  the  limits  of  the  life 
of  his  own  little  "  cult,"  that  the  contemplation  of  centuries 
seems  to  make  him  dizzy ;  to  give  him  a  mental  squint,  so  to 
speak,  in  presence  of  the  spectacle  of  the  historic  grandeur  of 
the  Catholic  Church  which  therefore  sits  upon  him  like  a  night- 
mare. Is  this  representation,  then,  as  he  says,  the  invention 
of  Pius  IX.?  Pestilent  nonsense!  The  man  is  stark  madl 
Christian  archaeology,  symbolism  and  art,  is  full  of  the  idea. 
The  original,  in  another  form,  appeared  at  Bethlehem  in  that 
sublime  picture  of  "  the  Child  with  Mary  his  Mother,"  which 
the  Magi  saw  on  that  happy  morning  when  "  the  stars  sang 
together,"  and  before  which  they  knelt  and  adore^\  I  am  not 
arguing  now,  but  only  instruGting  the  Vicar  and  liis  Episcopal 
superior,  if,  oddly  enough,  he  acknowledges  him  as  such,  in 
Catholic  truth.  "  God  sent  his  Son,  made  of  a  woman,"  says 
St.  Paul,  Galatians  iv.  4.  Here  is  the  germinal,  the  basilar 
principle  of  all  devotion  to  our  Blessed  Mother  as  "  Chief  of 
Saints."  This  thought  carries  me  out  on  the  wide  ocean  of , 
Catholic  truth,  while  my  opponents  are  away  up  in  little  rivu- 
lets and  stranded  on  shoals  at  that,  with  hardly  water  enough 
to  moisten  the  soles  of  their  parched  feet.  It  lifts  me  and  my^ 
subject  to  the  mountain  top,  while  my  opponents  are  browsing 
in  the  valleys  below.  The  profound  and  eternal  principles 
which  underlie  the  dogmas  we  hold,  the  honor  we  pay  the 
saints,  and  the  worship  of  God  in  which  we  join,  give  a  scope 
and  grasp  to  our  knowledge  of  the  Christian  religion  too  tre- 


A  Kescmk.  61 

raendons  to  be  cooped  up  in  cavil  such  as  my  opponents  in- 
dulge in;  and  one  feels  "cabin'd,  crilll>'d,  contin'd "  in  tlie 
attempt  to  talk  itj)  the  little  ^^JVarroivs  "  where  they  do  their 
theological  thinking.  An  instructed  Catholic  is  simply  a  giant 
in  kni.  '■  (Ige  of  the  Christian  religion  compared  with  such 
men,  and  he  feels  uneasy  in  combat  with  dwarfs.  This  is  no 
mere  extravagance  or  affectation,  but  literal  fact.  A  Catholic 
may  be  unable  through  want  of  habit  or  reading,  through  in- 
disposition or  inal)ihty  to  handle  details,  to  answer  readily  or 
clearly  to  those  thousand  little  petulances  which  a  read  adver- 
sary may  launch  by  the  hour ;  and  a  learned  Protestant  will 
often  fancy  he  has  "shut  liim  up,"  the  real  fact  being  that  the 
Catholic  is  •'  shut  up  "  by  the  stupendous  Pon-ac(piaintance  of 
his  opponent.  lie  may  give  some  general  answer  to  such 
popular  objections  as  St.  Bartholomew's,  or  "  The  Gunpowder 
Plot ";  he  may  speak  wisely  on  Littledale's  "  Plain  Reasons," 
"  Bishop  Strossmayer's  speech  at  the  Vatican  Council,"  or  "  The 
Impious  Utterances"  of  "St.  Liguori  "  and  "The  Raccolta," 
but,  because  his  creed  is  a  logical  synthesis,  he  feels  all  the 
time  how  superficial  it  all  is,  and  that  what  he  really  has  to  do 
is  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  to  discuss  what  is  meant  by  Chris- 
tianity, and  what  the  very  theory  of  the  supernatural  involves. 
This  he  cannot  do  in  a  moment. 

"  God  sent  his  Son,  made  of  a  woman."  Christianity, 
therefore,  is  the  religion  of  the  IncariMtion.  All  there  is  in  it 
proceeds  from,  depends  on,  and  clusters  around  that  ineffable 
mystery,  in  which  the  design  of  God  in  creation — the  deifica- 
tion of  the  creature,  or  his  elevation  to  perfect  union  with 
God — is  consummated.  The  devotion  to  Mary  grows  out  of 
the  Incarnation,  as  does  the  Church  herself,  and  tends,  we 
think,  to  keep  alive  faith  in  that  crowning  act  of  the  Creator. 
If  we  would  express  Christianity  as  a  whole  we  must  symbolize 
the  Incarnation,  and  the  only  perfect  symbol  possible  is  that 
of  the  reality  which  the  Magi  saw — the  Madoima  and  Child. 
And  why  is  it  the  only  symbol  of  the  Incarnation  %  Because 
the  Incarnation  means  that  God  is  man  ;  but  how  can  we  ex- 
press the  truth  that  God  is  man  except  by  showing  that  he  has 
a  mother  ?     In  his  divine  nature  he  has  no  mother ;  then  if  he 


62  Ii'SE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

lias  a  motlier  lie  is  man.  Wlience  the  Creeds  do  not  merely 
say  that  Clirint  is  the  Son  of  God,  or  that  the  Son  of  God  was 
made  man,  but  affirm  that  He  was  "  horn  of  the  Vir</ln  Mary  "; 
"  Incartiiite  of  {or  from)  the  Viryhi  JLtri/,'''' — thus  setting 
fortli  the  same  divine  Person  as  at  once  tlie  Son  of  God  and 
tlic  Son  of  Mary.  Tliat  is,  they  show  us  Incarnate  God  in  his 
,  Mother's  arms,  they  st/j/ibolise  the  Incarnation  by  the  Madonna 
and  Cliild.  This,  I  need  not  say,  is  no  mere  modern  idea.  It 
is  found  again  and  again  in  the  Catacombs.  See  De  Rossi,  in 
the  Fi'cnch  translation  of  his  work,  "  Images  de  la  Sainte 
Vierge  choisis  dans  les  Catacombes  de  Home."  Rome 
18G3,  p.  0. 

And  the  poetic  representation  of  the  woman  crushing  the 
serpent's  head  is  also  of  great  antiquity.  It  is  sung  by  Pru- 
dentius,  the  most  illustrious  of  the  Christian  poets,  who  tlour- 
ished  about  405,  in  his  work,  Cathemer'mon  seu  Liber  Ilym- 
norum  Quotidlanorum,  3,  5,  146,  SS.  as  follows: 

Hoc  odium  vetus  illud  erat, 
Hoc  erat  aspidis  atque  honiiuis 
Digladiabile  discidiiim, 
Quod  modo  cernua  femineis 
Vipera  prater  itiir  pedibus. 

Edere  namque  deum  merita 
Omnia  virgo  veuena  doniat, 
Tractibus  unguis  inexpUcitis 
Virus  inerme  piger  revomit 
Grainine  concolor  in  viridi. 

But  the  crowning  proof  that  Pius  IX.  did  not  invent  the 
idea  of  the  figure  said  by  the  Vicar  to  have  been  erected  by 
him,  is  furnished  by  the  celebrated  statue  ordered  to  be  made 
by  Ugo  de  Summo  and  erected  in  a  chapel  in  Cremona,  in 
1047.  He  ordered  to  be  made — I  translate :  "  A  noble  and 
beautiful  statue  of  incorruptible  wood  or  marble  to  represent 
the  figure  of  Blessed  Mary  our  mother  crowned  with  twelve 
stars,  fully  clothed  with  the  sun  and  moon,  and  having  beneath 
her  feet  the  old  serpent  to  which  God  had  said  in  earthly  Para- 
dise :  IwiUjput  enmity  between  thee  and  the  woman,  etc.  (Gen. 


A  ItEiUMt:.  68 

iii.  15).  I  wish,  too,  that  tlie  serpent  be  so  carved  that  he  may 
be  seen  to  eject  his  poison  harmlessly,  and  that  his  most  vile 
head  the  Blessed  Virgin  may  so  crush,  as  becomes  her,  who  by 
the  grace  of  her  Son,  her  redemption  being  anticipated,  was 
preserved  from  the  original  stain,  her  soul  and  body  being 
intact  and  immaculate. 

"  I  also  ordain  that  every  year  on  the  festival  of  the  Im- 
maculate Concei)tioii  of  Blessed  Mary,  Mother  of  God,  in  this 
same  chapel  during  Mass  .  .  .  this  hymn  be  sung: 

"  Candidissima  uti  lilia 
Salve  aeterni  Patris  iilia. 
Salve  mater  Redeniptoris 
Salve  sponsa  Spiratoris. 

"  Sme  macula  coucepta 
Salve  Triadis  electa. 
Salve  inferni  victorix  aspidis 
Illius  expers  sola  cuspidis. 

*'  Salve  Triadis  electa 
Sine  macula  concepta." 

On  this  famous  moimment  of  Christian  antiquity,  see  Bal- 
lerini,  Sylloye  21(mum£iitorum,  part  first,  pp.  1-25.  Home, 
1854.' 

'  I  have  before  me  the  Sylloge  of  the  learned  Jesuit  critic,  Father 
Ballerini,  in  which  the  above  document  is  given  in  full  and  illus- 
trated with  explanatory  notes.  Father  Hurter,  in  his  Dogmatic 
Tlieoloyy,  vol.  2,  p.  390,  gives  an  extract  from  it  and  rofei-s  to  the 
Parisian  edition  of  Ballerini,  while  my  edition  is  the  Roman.  Since 
writing  the  above  Letter,  however,  I  find  that  Father  Harper,  who 
had  formerly  quoted  it  in  proof  of  a  popular  belief  in,  and  devotion 
to  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  Mary  in  the  eighth  century,  now 
denies  its  authenticity,  and  I'efei's,  in  sujjport  of  his  contention,  to  a 
contribution  on  the  subject  from  a  learned  Bollandist  (Jesuit)  in  the 
columns  of  the  Society's  famous  jmblication,  Etudes  Religieuses, 
which  he  had  not  before  seen.  I  leave  the  matter  in  the  hands  of 
experts  ;  but  it  is  another  striking  proof  of  the  care  and  fearlessness 
with  which  Catholic  scholarship,  purely  and  pimply  in  the  cause  of 
truth,  has  walked  over  the  records  of  ancient  documents,  testing 
and  sounding  at  every  step,  in  their  endeavors  to  find  every  boggy 
spot  in  them.  See  the  splendid  tribute  of  the  Anglican  Pi-ofessor, 
Canon  Stokes,  to  the  Bollaudists,  in  Letter  XL  of  the  Rejoinder. 


64  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

How  many  hnndreds  more  of  symbolical  representations  of 
the  Holy  Mother  could  I  give  from  Christian  art  through  the 
ages?  See  Clement's  ^^  Christian  Syinhols,^''  pp.  IDl,  214. 
But  as  Raskin  observes,  "  Art  is  nothing  but  a  noble  and  ex- 
pressive language,"  and  the  "  Glories  of  Mary,"  whether  por- 
trayed by  the  rude  artist  of  the  Catacombs,  a  Ilaphael  with  his 
liundrod  and  twenty  Madonnas,  or  a  Cimabue,  a  Dante  or  a 
Wordsworth,  are  still  for  the  sake  of  her  Son,  are  ordered  to 
that  great  central  fact  of  our  holy  religion — the  Incarnation — 
and  do  but  remind  us  that  there  was  One,  who,  though  lie  was 
all  blessed  from  all  eternity,  yet  for  the  sake  of  sinners  "did 
not  shrink  from  the  Virghi's  womb."  I  am  not  here  dis- 
cussing any  doctrine  concerning  her,  but  simply  meeting  this 
writer's  statement  about  the  figure  which  he  says  Pius  IX. 
erected,  Dec.  8th,  1854.  According  to  Clement,  page  210,  the 
model  of  the  Virgin  for  the  Immaculate  Conception  is  the 
woman  of  the  Apocalypse.  In  \\\q  facade  of  the  Cathedral  in 
this  city,  there  is  a  statue  representing  this  Immaculate  Con- 
ception with  the  moon  beneath  her  feet,  while  she  crushes  the 
serpent's  head.  The  significance  of  the  whole  idea,  whether 
embodied  in  figure  or  text,  I  have  fully  explained,  and  having 
vindicated  the  Catholic  position  thereon,  need  dwell  no  further 
on  it. 


LETTER  VI. 

ipse,    ipsa,    IPSUM — A   RESUME. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe  : 

Sir, — I  have  been  asked  to  give  a  translation  of  the  quoted 
Latin  hymns,  for  the  benefit  of  non-classical  readers.  The  first 
stanza  from  the  beautiful  hymn  of  Prudentius  is  at  follows : 
"  Hence  came  the  enmity  of  old  between  the  serpents  and 
man,  that  inextinguishable  (implacable)  feud, — that  now  the 
viper  prostrate  heneath  the  woman's  feet  lies  crvshed  and 


A  Resume.  65 

tramjjled  onP  Second  stanza :  "  For  the  Virgin,  who  obtained 
grace  to  bring  forth  God,  hath  charmed  away  all  his  poisons ; 
and  driven  to  hide  himself  in  the  f/mss,  green  as  himself^  he 
there  coiled  up  in  his  folds,  torpidly  vomits  forth  his  now 
hai^mless  venom," 

The  hymn  ordered  to  be  sung  in  the  Mass  by  the  famous 
Ugo  de  Summo,  is  as  follows : 

Spotless  as  the  lily 
Hail  daughter  of  the  Eternal  Father, 
Hail  Mother  of  the  Redeemer, 
Hail  spouse  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Hail  elect  of  the  Trinity 
,  Conceived  without  stain. 

Hail  vanquisher  of  the  infernal 
Sei-pent  who  alone  didst  avoid  his  dart. 
Hail  elect  of  the  Trinity- 
Conceived  without  stain. 

Of  the  Yicar's  last  letter  there  remain  to  be  dealt  with— his 
quotation  from  Canon  Oakeley,  his  comments  thereon  and  con- 
clusions therefrom.  I  am  obliged  to  refer  to  it,  in  the  execu- 
tion of  my  purpose,  that  I  may  burn  out  its  crypto-poisonous 
deceits,  lest  they  might  mislead  and  my  work  seem  incomplete. 
And,  first,  he  calls  Canon  Oakeley  "  an  Ultramontane  of  the 
Ultramontanes,"  thus  using  the  word  offensively  for  the  whole 
Catholic  communion — a  sort  of  substitute  for  the  word 
'•''Poper])^''  which  has  grown  somewhat  vulgar.  But  as  a  con- 
troversial trick  it  is  simply  characteristic,  and  I  would  not 
notice  it  did  not  this  writer  Avhine  so  piteously  for  the  "  polite 
and  polished  style  "  of  treatmjent  for  himself.  Perhaps  after 
all  I  rightly  "  measured  my  man."  My  readers  may  like  to 
know  a  little  about  this  "  Ultramontane."  Who  was  he  %  He 
was  at  one  time  a  most  charming  Ritualistic  minister,  and  as  he 
himself  would  say,  ''''played  at  priest "  in  that  celebrated  Mar- 
garet street  chapel  in  London,  where  be  endeavored  to  work 
out  to  the  utmost  the  liturgical  and  devotional  capabilities  of 
the  Anglican  system.     His  object  was  to  engraft  as  much 


66  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Catholic  feeling  upon  the  English  Eitual  as  it  would  bear,  to 
make  his  ilock  as  Catholic  as  it  was  possible  without  ceasing  to 
be  Anglican.  But  the  system  broke  down  under  the  pressure 
— the  plant  would  not  bear  the  new  honors  set  upon  it.  In- 
stead of  sympathy  from  his  ecclesiastical  superior,  less  happy 
in  this  than  the  man  who  now  insults  his  memory,  a  prosecu- 
tion in  the  Ecclesiastical  Courts  checked  and  crushed  Mr. 
Oakeley's  attempt  to  infuse  life  into  the  service  and  devotion 
of  the  English  Church.  The  illusion  was  dispelled ;  and  he 
saw  no  alternative  but  sinking  down  fairly  into  Anglicanism  in 
its  ordinary  dreariness,  or  embracing  the  glorious  liberty  and 
consolations  of  Catholicity.  He  responded  to  God's  grace  and 
accepted  the  latter.  In  "  A  Letter  on  Submitting  to  the  Cath- 
olic Church  "  he  says  :  "  I  have  now  come  round  to  the  opinion 
with  which  others  wiser  than  myself  began :  that  the  attempt 
to  infuse  the  Koman  spirit  into  the  Anglican  body  is  like  '  put- 
ting new  wine  into  old  vessels,'  the  effect  of  which  must  be  to 
mar  the  vessel  and  spill  the  wine — to  dissipate  the  Catholic 
introduction  and  shiver  the  Anglican  receptacle  to  pieces." 
He  was  ordained  a  priest  of  the  Catholic  Church  and  loved, 
lived  and  labored  for  her  cause  till  his  death  a  few  years  ago. 
Of  course,  therefore,  he  is  "  an  Ultramontane !  "  But  let  that 
pass.  During  his  life  he  wrote  many  able  and  beautiful  things, 
in  prose  and  verse,  but  his  very  best  was  his  triumphant 
answer  to  his  old  friend,  Pr.  Pusoy's  Irenicon — a  pam])hlet  en- 
titled "The  Leading  Topics  of  Dr.  Pusey's  recent  Work." 
From  this  pamphlet  is  taken  the  quotation  which  the  Vicar 
gives  as  follows :  "  I  now  come  to  what  we  (Eoman  Catholics) 
regard  as  the  Scriptural  germ  of  every  doctrine  and  the  legiti- 
inate  ground  of  every  authorized  devotion  on  the  subject  of 
the  Blessed  Virgin.  I  mean  the  prediction  of  herolnce  in  the 
Christian  Dispensation  uttered  l)y  Almighty  God  at  time  of 
the  fall,"  and  he  brackets — (viz. :  Gen.  iii.  15).  IS'ow  in  the 
name  of  the  sacred  memory  of  Canon  Oakeley,  of  honor, 
decency  and  truth,  I  invoke  upon  this  writer  the  reprobation 
of  all  fair-minded  and  truth-loving  men  !  Has  he  in  his  pos- 
session Father  Oakeley's  ])amphlet,  or  is  he  quoting  second- 
hand ?    In  either  case  his  sin  is  the  same  ;  and  is  the  Bishop  a 


A  Eesuaie.  67 

imrticeps  crhninis?  He  intends  to  give  the  impression  that 
Canon  Oakeley  is  speaking  of  that  part  of  the  text  under  dis- 
cussion— " She  shall  crush  i/ii/  head,'''  etc. — whereas  he  is 
speaking  of  Mary  as  the  AVoman  divinely  jirojihesied  as  Satan's 
direct  and  irauiediate  enemy  in  that  great  scheme  of  Redemp- 
tion wliich  God  was  announcing,  whose  seed,  Christ,  was  to 
■  redeem  lue  world  and  between  whom  and  the  serpent  undying 
enmity  was  to  exist.  It  is  "  her  office  in  the  Christian  dispen- 
sation," as  mother  of  our  Redeemer  and  Saviour,  in  His  sacred 
Immanity,  that  is  predicted  in  the  utterance  of  Almighty  God, 
and  tliis,  with  all  that  it  implies,  is  her  great  glory  as  "chief  of 
saints."  AVell,  then,  may  Canon  Oakeley  call  it  the  "  Scrip- 
tural germ "  and  "  legitimate  ground "  of  devotion  to  her. 
AVill  this  writer  deny  it  ?  Rut  the  reading  of  "  He,"  "  She  "  or 
"  It  "  does  not  afEect  this  sublime  truth  which  is  absolutely  in- 
different to  them,  as  I  have  so  f  ally  shown,  and  Canon  Oakeley 
builds  nothing  on  them.  I  challenge  this  Vicar,  then,  to  ])ro- 
duce  liis  proof  to  thu  contrary,  if  he  has  it,  and  from  the 
pamphlet,  or  stand  before  this  comnmnity  branded  as  the 
prince  of  garblers  and  tergiversators ! 

My  readers  can  now  "  measure  their  man  "  when  he  says, 
speaking  of  the  above  quotation,  that  it  "  is  a  very  strong 
statement  and  ouglit  to  be  exceeding  startling  to  those  who 
accept  it."  Rut  who  wt'll  noic  accept  it  in  tlie  sense  lie  has  so 
mahgnantly  tried  to  twist  out  of  it  ?  And  as  for  being  star- 
tled, well,  Catholics  are  too  familiar  with  the  blasphemies 
against  truth  of  that  Grand  Lama  of  ritualism — Littledale,  to 
be  at  all  moved  by  the  stammerings  of  a  mere  "  middy  "  in  his 
crew.  He  follows  uj)  his  last  statement  by  saying :  "  Espe- 
cially when  it  is  kiiown  that  Liguori  (Glories  of  Mary,  Rt.  2, 
Disc.  1),  Rope  RIiis  IX.  and  many  of  the  bishops  who  asked  him 
to  promulge  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception,  ba.sed 
their  chief  arguments  in  favor  of  it  on  the  false  reading  in 
some  such  terms  a.'?  these  :  '  She  who  was  said  to  crush  Satan 
could  never  have  been,  even  for  a  moment,  even  in  lier 
mother's  v^cmb,  under  original  sin.'  "  ''  In  some  such  terms 
as  these!"  How  perfect  an  imitation  of  the  cuttle-fish!  lie 
thus  obfuscates  the  waters  of  truth  in  ordej-  to  escape  from  in- 


68  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

coTivenicnt  scrutiny !  How  can  I,  willing  and  anxious  to  meet 
every  miserable  semblance  of  argument  of  tliis  writer,  be  ex- 
pected to  encounter  and  grapple  with  so  shadowy  and  indefi- 
nite a  statement?  In  February,  1849,  Pius  IX.,  in  answer  to 
petitions  which  flowed  in  from  every  side  asking  him  to  pro- 
nounce a  dogmatic  decision  on  this  doctrine,  issued  from  Gaeta 
his  Encyclical  Letter  addressed  to  all  the  patriarchs,  primates, 
archbishops  and  bishops  of  the  Catholic  world,  requesting 
them  to  make  known  to  him,  in  the  most  clear  and  explicit 
terms,  what  was  the  devotion  of  their  clergy  and  people 
towards  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Mother  of  Christ, 
and  what  above  all  was  their  own  opinion  and  desire.  From 
Asia  and  the  East  to  North  America  and  the  Far  West,  from 
the  shores  of  tlie  J^altic  to  Australia  and  the  Isles  of  the  Great 
Pacific,  replies  poured  into  Rome  from  six  hundred  and  three 
hisJiops,  every  one  of  whom,  without  exception,  exju-essed  his 
belief  in  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Mother 
and  his  devotion  towards  this  mystery  of  God's  love  and 
power.  Before  such  a  majestic  scene  what  is  the  whole 
Anglican  Episcopate  capped  by  its  "  Papal "  Privy  Council 
with  its  American  daughter  thrown  in !  A  sorry  group  in- 
deed !  By  order  of  the  great  Pontiff  these  replies  were  printed 
m  nine  large  volumes  with  an  appendix.  And  yet  this  Yicar 
who  never  saw  their  very  covers  dares  to  epitomize  their  con- 
tents— "In  some  such  terms  as  these!"  What  blind  infatua- 
aion !  What  unparalleled,  what  audacious  and  arrogant 
insolence !  It  is  simply  and  absolutely  false,  that  many  of  the 
bishops  "  based  their  chief  arguments  "  on  the  alleged  "  false 
reading"  and  the  phrasing  he  has  confessedly  manfactured  ; 
it  is  shamelessly  and  monstrously  false  that  even  ane  of  the 
bishops  based  any  argument  for  the  Prerogatives  of  Mary 
upon  that  part  of  the  text:  "She  shall  crush  thy  head." 
When  it  is  used  at  all  the  meaning  is  simply  that  which  I  have 
already  so  often  put,  and  it  would  be  the  same  to  the  Catholic 
mind  if  "He"  or  "It"  were  used.  And  this  is  the  sense  of 
St.  Liguori  himself  in  the  ])assage  referred  to — "  Glories  of 
Mary,"  p.  340.  Dr.  Pusey's  "  ajjt  phrase  "  that  "  the  major 
premiss  of  the  argument  is  gone,  when  it  appears  that  nothing 
is  said  here  (Gen.  iii.  15)  of  any  personal  victory  of  hers" 


A  Eesume.  09 

(Mary's),  is  therefore  meaningless ;  it  is,  in  the  words  of  Canon 
Oakeley  —  "a  phantom  of  the  Devil's  creating,  and  one 
among  the  many  evidences  which  history  and  experience  fur- 
nish of  liis  implacable  hostility  to  her  whom  he  knows  to  be  a 
great  antagonist  of  his  power.''  The  Vicar  is  quite  welcome 
to  his  "  apt  phrase,"  and  if  the  cap  Canon  Oakeley  made  for 
\  Dr.  Pusey  fits  hhn  he  can  appropriate  it  with  my  best  wishes. 
It  is  not  Canon  Oakeley  who  says  there  shall  be  enmity  between 
the  serpent  and  his  seed  and  the  woman — these  are  the  words 
of  Almighty  God  Himself.     Amen  ! 

Having  thus  disposed  of  the  Yicar's  incrustations  of  the 
main  question  I  have  now  to  accept  the  challenge — to  take  up 
the  gauntlet  which  he  throws  down  in  the  concluding  para- 
graph of  his  first  letter  in  these  words :  "  It  ought  to  be  re- 
membered, in  this  connection,  that  the  Church  of  England  has 
preserved  her  balance  well  under  the  circumstances,  and  ob- 
serves four  Feasts  yearly  in  honor  of  the  Holy  Mother."  What 
<;an  he  mean  by  "under  the  circumstances"? 

"  The  Church  of  England  ! "  Here  a  difficulty  presented  itself 
which  for  a  moment  I  could  not  solve.  I  could  not  forget  that 
within  that  church  "  as  by  law  established,"  there  are  at  least 
two  parties  too  widely  different  to  make  it  pc^ssible  to  argue 
with  both  at  once  without  a  great  deal  of  force  on  one  or  the 
other  being  wasted.  A  sharp  line,  which  grows  sharper  year 
by  year,  has  to  be  drawn  between  the  old-fashioned  Protestant, 
represented  by  the  Bishop,  whose  earnest  conviction  generally 
I  calls  forth  respect,  and  the  modern  Ritualist  or  Anglo-Catho- 
;  lie,  as  he  would  style  himself,  with  whose  seeming  self-delusion 
it  is  so  difficult  to  be  gentle.  It  is  of  little  use  to  prove  to  the 
Bishop  that  the  pre-Augustine  Chm-ch  in  England  was  Pajial, 
for  he  might  easily  grant  and  lament  it  in  the  same  breath 
without  the  fact  U})setting  his  particular  theory;  and  it  is 
equally  waste  of  time  to  prove  to  the  Ritualist  that  the  Refor- 
mation was  a  terrible  disaster,  both  from  the  social  and  religions 
point  of  view.  This  he  already  believes,  for,  do  not  two 
Ritualistic  leaders  say  so  ?  The  Rev.  Baring  Gould  says  the 
Reformation  was  "a  miserable  apostasy,"  and  the  Grand  Lama 
Littledale  says  the  Reformers  were  *'  utterly  unredeemed  vil- 


10  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipslm. 

lains^^;  the  ilitualistic  Church  News,  that  "Cranmer,  Eidley, 
Latimer  and  Jewell "  and  the  rest  "  were  apostates,  traitors, 
perjurers,  robbers  and  persecutors,"  and  the  Union  Review 
that  "Barlow  and  Scory  were  rascals" — and  is  not  the  Eitualist 
striving  in  his  own  way  to  undo  the  work  of  all  these 
"  villains"?  IIow  was  I  to  reconcile  these  contradictions  so  as 
to  be  able  to  meet  the  paragraph  before  me?  In  my  per- 
plexity I  had  recourse  to  the  "  myriad-minded  "  poet.  The 
attitude  of  these  rival  parties  resembles  that  of  the  two  Dro- 
niios  in  the  comedy:  each  maintains  that //(?  is  the  true  and 
original  representative  of  the  genuine  Church  of  England,  and 
that  the  other  is  only  an  impostor.  Dromio  of  Syracuse,  who 
represents  the  Bishop,  says  to  the  Duke  of  Ephesus,  who  repre- 
sents the  Privv  Council : 

"  I,  sir,  am  Dromio ;  command  him  away."  But  Dromio  of 
Ephesus,  who  represents  the  Ritualist,  replies  : 

"I,  sir,  am  Dromio;  pray  let  me  stay."  The  Duke — that  is 
the  Privy  Coimcil — benignly  observes  that  it  is  cpiite  open  to 
anybody  to  "stay"  if  only  he  is  willing  to  do  so;  whereupon 
the  battle  ends,  just  as  in  the  comedy,  and  one  of  the  Dromios, 
giving  his  arm  to  the  otlier,  cheerfully  exclaims : 

"  We  came  into  the  world  like  brother  and  brother ;  and 
now  let's  go  hand  in  hand,  not  one  before  the  other."  And  so 
I  will  consider  the  Bishop  and  his  Vicar  thus  shaking  hands 
over  "The  Book  of  Common  Prayer,"  in  which  I  can  thou 
look  for  evidence,  binding  on  both  parties,  of  the  way  in  which 
the  Church  of  England  "preserves  her  balance"  in  honoring 
the  Mother  of  man's  Redeemer. 

Let  me  l)ogin  by  saying  that  in  this  paragraph  the  Vicar  has 
"  sounded  the  very  base  string  "  of  religious  hypocrisy  and  deceit, 
from  which  he  can  be  absolved  only  on  the  assumption  that  he 
is  suffering  from  such  a  paralysis  of  conscieiice  as  to  be  unable 
to  distinguish  liglit  from  darkness.  Now,  in  reply  to  his  claim 
I  charge  that,  judged  l)y  the  Book  of  Conmion  Prayer,  no  sec- 
taries have  surpassed,  few  have  e(iuallcr1,  the  Anglican  Church 
in  ingratitude  and  irreverence  tow<ards  her  in  whom  the  Most 
High  became  Incarnate.  Thus  Greeks  and  Russians,  in  spite 
of  their  exile  from  Catholic  Unity,  have  not  so  far  departed 


A  Resume.  71 

from  Christian  belief  in  this  particular.  There  is  not  a  house 
in  all  Russia,  from  the  palace  of  the  Emperor  to  the  hut  of 
the  jjeasant,  which  does  not  contain  a  picture  of  the  Immacu- 
late Virgin.  Even  modern  Greeks,  fallen  as  they  are,  cease 
not  to  invoke  her.  England  alone  knows  not,  nor  desires  to 
know,  the  Mother  of  the  world's  Redeemer.  The  only  English- 
men who  comprehend,  however  faintly,  w^iat  she  has  been  to 
the  human  family,  are  the  professors  of  pure  rationalism. 
Though  they  have  misused,  they  have  not  quite  abdicated,  the 
gift  of  reason  ;  and  it  helps  them  to  see  in  part  what  is  hidden 
from  those  wlio,  in  losing  faith,  seem  to  have  lost  reason  als^o. 
"The  world,"  says  Lecky,  in  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
works  of  our  time,  and  one  of  the  saddest,  "  is  governed  by  its 
ideals,  and  seldom  or  never  has  there  been  one  which  has  exer- 
cised a  more  profound  and,  on  the  whole,  a  more  salutary  iiillii- 
ence  than  the  mediaeval  conception  of  the  Vii-gin.  For  the  iirst 
time  woman  was  elevated  to  her  rightful  ])osition,  and  the 
sanctity  of  weakness  was  recognized  as  well  as  the  sanctity  of 
sorrow.  No  longer  the  slave  or  toy  of  man,  no  longer  associ- 
ated only  with  ideas  of  degradation,  and  of  sensuality,  woman 
rose,  in  the  person  of  the  Virgin  JMother,  into  a  new  spheiv, 
and  became  the  object  of  a  reverential  homage  of  which  antii]- 
uity  had  had  no  conception.  Love  was  idealized.  The  nioral 
charm  and  beauty  of  female  excellence  was  for  the  tirst  time 
felt.  A  new  type  of  character  was  called  into  being ;  a  new 
kind  of  admiration  was  fostered.  Into  a  harsh  and  ignorant 
and  benighted  age  this  ideal  type  infused  a  type  of  gentleness 
and  purity  unknown  to  the  proudest  civilizations  of  the  past. 
In  the  pages  of  living  tenderness  which  many  a  monkish 
writer  has  left  in  honor  uf  his  celestial  patron  ;  in  the  millions 
who,  in  many  lands  and  in  many  ages,  have  sought  with  no 
barren  desire  to  mould  their  character  into  her  image ;  in  those 
holy  maidens,  who,  for  the  love  of  Mary,  have  separated  them- 
selves from  all  the  glories  and  pleasures  of  the  world,  to  seek 
in  fastings  and  vigils  and  huml)le  charity  to  render  themselves 
worthy  of  her  benediction  ;  in  the  new  sense  of  honor,  in  the 
chivalrous  respect,  in  the  softening  of  manners,  in  the  refine- 
ment of  tastes  displayed  in  all  the  walks  of  society ;   m  tlioso 


72  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

and  in  many  other  ways  we  detect  its  influence.  All  that  was 
best  in  Europe  clustered  around  it,  and  it  is  the  origin  of  many 
of  the  purest  elements  of  our  civilization."  "History  of 
Rationalism,"  vol.  1,  pp.  234,  235. 

The  Church  of  England  "  observes  four  feasts  in  honor  of 
the  Holy  Virgin,"  says  this  writer.  Yes,  and  just  about  as 
McMillan's  Almanac  observes  those  three  in  its  pages !  Good 
God !  What  a  way  to  honor  her  in  whose  pure  veins  lirst 
flowed  that  precious  and  life-giving  blood  whose  shedding  on 
the  Cross  cancelled  death,  satisfied  the  justice  of  God  and  saved 
us !  Let  me  prove  what  I  have  said.  In  the  English  church 
calendar  it  is  true  there  are  certain  days  which  are  called  feasts 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin — the  Purification,  Annunciation,  Visita- 
tion and  Nativity — but  can  anything  be  conceived  more  sad 
and  melancholy,  more  cold  and  uninviting  than  these  Anglican 
remembrances  of  Mary  ?  They  are  fasts  rather  than  feasts. 
They  are  the  gaunt  and  awful  spectres  of  those  Catholic  fes. 
tivals  which  used  once  to  cheer  up  and  gladden  the  popular 
heart  of  the  nation.  They  are  indeed  called  festivals  of  Mary, 
but  Mary's  name  remains  unnoticed  and  uncommemorated  by 
them.  Listen,  my  readers.  The  few  other  saints  whom  An- 
glicanism professes  to  honor  have  their  names  mentioned  in 
the  Collect  of  the  day,  but  even  this  cold  tribute  of  respect  is 
denied  to  the  Mother  of  God !  The  rule  is,  on  such  days,  to 
avoid  as  much  as  possible  any  allusion  to  the  Holy  Virgin,  and 
the  occasion  is  improved  into  an  attack  on  the  Catholic  Church 
for  her  "  Idolatrous  worship,  etc.,  etc."  The  Vicar  calls  her 
the  "  Chief  of  Saints."  Yet,  take  it  in  Christian  hearts,  if  you 
can,  her  blessed  name  is  never  mentioned  from  one  end  of  the 
Book  to  the  other,  l)eyond  the  way  in  which  it  occurs  in  Mc- 
Millan's Almanac,  outside  of  its  mention  in  the  Gospels,  where 
it  could  not  be  suppressed — that  is,  not  the  slightest  notice  is 
taken  of  her  on  account  of  any  merit  of  hers !  I  wish  I  had 
space  to  copy  here  the  Collects  for  the  feasts  of  the  Purifica- 
tion and  the  Annunciation,  the  only  feasts  of  Blessed  Mary 
provided  with  Collects,  and  to  place  them  side  by  side  with  the 
Collects  for  the  feasts  of  "St.  John  the  Baptist"  and  "St. 
Michael  and  All  Angels."    In  the  latter  the  Saints  are  extolled 


A  ItEstMi;.  73 

and  their  examples  held  up  for  imitation,  whereas  in  tlie 
former  not  tlie  slightest  reference  is  made  to  Mary,  who  is 
supposed  to  be  honored  by  the  feast.  Let  my  readers  just 
compare  these  Collects  and  see  for  themselves  the  way  in  which 
the  so-called  feasts  of  the  "Chief  of  Saints"  are  observed.  I 
am  right,  alas !  too  correct  in  saying  that  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land indignantly  rejects  and  scorns  any  teaching  that  calls  upon 
it  to  exhibit  the  slightest  practical  reverence  or  gratitude  to  the 
Mother  of  God.  If  this  Yicar  is  any  better  we  know  where 
he  gets  it — that  is  suh  rosa  for  the  present. 

But  what  has  become,  in  this  Vicar's  hands,  of  the  Jifth 
feast,  marked  in  the  church  calendar — the  feast  of  the  "  Con- 
ception of  the  Virgin  "  on  the  8th  December?  This  was  estab- 
lished in  England  by  St.  Ansel m,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
in  the  Eleventh  Century.  Wliy  did  the  Vicar  suppress  it  in 
his  enumeration  'i  Was  it  because  it  is  of  as  little  importance 
as  the  four  he  mentioned?     Give  the  public  the  reason. 

Thus  I  leave  the  matter  to  the  judgment  of  my  readers.  I 
have  not  touched  "  St.  Liguori "  and  "  The  Raecolta."  My  chal- 
lenge to  the  Bishop  and  his  Vicar  to  discuss  that  whole  sub- 
ject before  a  select  audience,  chosen  by  ourselves  through  a 
responsible  joint  committee,  still  stands. 

To  put  the  whole  matter  of  this  controversy  in  a  nutshell. 
Bishop  Kingdon  said  that  "  IrsA  "  in  the  Vulgate  Bible  (Gen. 
iii.  15)  was  a  misprint  for  "Ipse,"  and  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception  was  based  or  founded  ou  it  and  re- 
sulted from  it.  This  statement  I  denied,  both  as  to  the  mis- 
print and  its  alleged  connection  with  the  doctrine ;  and  I 
proved,  I  think,  that  there  are  t/iree  accepted  readings  in  this 
place — Ipse,  Ipsa  and  Ipsum — so  that  no  such  question  of 
misprint  as  the  Bishop  put  it  can  arise.  I  showed,  moreover, 
that  the  meaning  was  the  same,  no  matter  which  was  adopted, 
and  that  C^itiiolic  authorities  used  them  indifferently.  The 
consequence  is  that,  even  assuming  that  the  true  state  of  the 
question  is  as  the  Bishop  put  it,  simply  between  Ipse  and 
Ipsa,  yet  then  he  was  absolutely  in  error,  as  I  have  fully 
proved,  in  asserting  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  or    its   promulgation,  had    anything  whatever  to 


74  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

do  with  it,  or  was  in  any  way  dependent  upon  it.     His  duty 
would  now  seem  clear  and  imperative. 

A  word  of  explanation.  I  cliaracterized  the  Vicar's  at- 
tack on  the  Catholic  church  and  myself  personally  as  "  the 
screain  of  a  drunken  Beelzebub."  This  has  been  objected 
to.  I  can't  help  it.  It  has,  perhaps,  been  misunderstood. 
The  expression  is  purely  metaphorical,  and  its  genesis  was 
this :  "ylZ^  the  yods  of  the  heathen  are  devils^''  Holy  Scripture 
says ;  but  idols  are  the  gods  of  the  heathen — therefore,  a  wor- 
shi])per  of  idols  is  an  idolater,  and  an  idolater  is  a  worshipper 
of  the  devil.  He  accused  the  Catholic  church  of  idolatry  in  all 
the  moods  and  tenses,  and  charged  against  me  that  I  accepted 
and  practised  her  teachings  thereon — and  this  of  his  own  mei'e 
motion.  I  was  not  very  particular  about  my  reply,  for  it  flashed 
through  my  mind  as  the  counterpart  of  his  charge  against  me — 
If  I  am  a  worshipper  of  devils,  as  you  say,  then  you  arc  the  prince 
of  devils,  and  that  personage  somewhat  under  the  influence  of 
"  the  ardent."  That  is  all,  and  I  sing  no  palinode  over  it  either. 
He  first  offended,  and  he  sticks  to  it.     I  am  content. 

Here  I  take  leave  of  this  ecclesiastical  dilettant.  For  the 
present  I  will  say  with  the  poet  ("  Twelfth  Night ") :  "  Fie, 
thou  dishonest  Sathan  :  I  call  thee  l)y  the  most  modest  terms,  for 
I  am  one  of  those  gentle  ones  that  will  use  the  devil  himself 
with  courtesy."  But  if  this  mild  admonition  does  not  pro- 
duce the  desired  effect,  let  this  reviler  of  the  Catholic  church 
be  warned  that  I  have  a  rod  in  pickle  for  him,  which  I  shall 
know  how  to  lay  on — and  with  sufficient  vigor. 

I  thank  you,  Mr.  Editor,  for  your  unbounded  courtesy,  and 
remain, 

Most  gratefully  yours, 

E.    F.    QUIGLEY. 


My  opponent  replied  to  the  above  Resume  in  a  series  of 
seven  letters.  A  most  minute  refutation  of  his  Strictures  is 
given  in  the  following  Rejoinder.  From  it,  too,  readers  will  get 
a  more  complete,  and  a  clearer  idea  of  his  criticism  than  if  they 
had  the  alia podrida,  the  ritualistic  stew,  in  a  mass. 


IPSE,  IPSA,  IPSUM— A  EEJOmDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — When  St.  Jude  described  certain  teachers  as  "  raging 
waves  of  the  sea  foaming  out  their  own  confusion,"  he  must 
have  had  in  prophetic  view  the  "  Priest  (save  the  mark !)  of 
tlie  Mission  Church,"  and  in  some  such  exhibition  as  that  con- 
cluded in  your  cohimns  yesterday.  Like  some  of  his  modest 
theological  progenitors — Ridley,  Latimer,  Barlow,  Parker, 
Cranmer  and  Co.,  wliom  his  favorite  saint,  Littledale,  fondly 
calls  "  utterly  unredeemed  villains  " — he  M'ould  cheerfully  offer 
instructions  to  the  very  Omniscient.  He  has  poured  himself 
out  after  the  error  of  Balaam /b/'  a  reward  (St.  Jude  i.  11), 
and  I  hope  he  may  get  it.  \yill  he  have  admirers  ?  "  Heroic 
Swan  ! " — I  hear  them  exclaim — "  I  love  thee  even  when  thou 
gabbiest  like  a  goose."  Their  bewitchment  must  often  be  ex- 
pressed in  Titania's  words  to  Bottom,  the  weaver,  as  soon  as 
he  ceased  from  braying  : 

"  I  pray  thee,  gentle  mortal,  sing  again; 
Mine  ear  is  much  enamored  of  thy  note." 

The  apostle  of  ritualism  in  this  city  has  spoken.  He  has 
served  up  for  its  citizens  a  meal  as  foul  with  falsehood  and 
calumny  as  was  ever  offered  in  support  of  a  starvetl-out  creed. 
I  ought  not  to  dirty  my  ink  by  noticing  it.  A  great  apostle  of 
another  gospel  expresses  my  feelings,  and  while  ex])ressing, 
saves  them  from  excess.  "  What  partici])ation  has  justice  with 
injustice?  Or  what  fellowship  hath  light  with  darkness? 
And  what  concord  hath  Christ  with  Belial?"  It  is  indeed 
"beneath  the  dignity  of  a  gentleman  to  cross  swords  \\nW\  such 
an  adversary,"  and  "  were  it  not  for  deeper  interests  at  stake 
than  my  own  honor,  nothing  further  would  be  heard  from 


me." 


(T.-J) 


7d  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

But  lam  a  Priest!  And  lest  my  ministrations  in  that 
capacity  be  thought  unauthorized,  or  the  validity  of  my  orders 
be  called  in  question — shades  of  Parker  and  Barlow,  avaunt ! 
— I  beg  to  refer  your  readers  to  my  documents :  1  Pet.  ii. 
6-15 ;  Apoc.  i.  6,  v.  10,  xx.  6.  Can  Bishop  Kingdou's  Vicar 
show  a  better  title  ?    Well,  hardly. 

These  texts  authorize,  yea,  oblige  me  to  officiate  at  the  altar 
of  truth,  and  my  "  priestly  vows  " — my  baptismal  promises — 
*'  bind  me  to  be  ready,  with  all  faithful  diligence,  to  banish 
and  drive  away  all  erroneous  and  strange  doctrines  contrary  to 
God's  Word,"  and  to  "  silence  the  ignorance  of  foolish  men." 
1  Pet.  ii.  15.  "  Busy  priest "  though  I  am  (and  Lent  is  now 
upon  me),  other  "  clerical  duties  "  must  bend  somewhat  to  the 
present  demand,  but  I  will  not  trespass  upon  you  till  next 
week. 

I  am  aware  of  the  press  on  your  columns  and  will  act  on 
the  spirit  of  your  editorial  intimation  as  strictly  and  sharply  as 
an  exhausting  logic  and  the  absolute  requirements  of  the  issue 
will  permit. 

Respectfully  yours, 

R.  F.  Qdigley, 
Eitchie's  Building,  Friday  A.M.,  Feb.  24,  1888. 


LETTER  I. 

IPSE,   IPSA,   IPSUM — A   REJOINDER. 

St.  John,  N.B,,  Thureday  evening,  March  1,  1888. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — After  the  argument  made  in  this  matter  in  my  Re- 
sume, two  courses,  I  submit,  were  open  to  Bishop  Kingdon. 
He  might  acknowledge  he  had  blundered,  or  by  his  silence  he 
might  show  his  intention  of  at  any  rate  leaving  those  who 
heard  or  read  his  statements  in  the  error  into  which — whether 
by  culpable  negligence  and  ignorance  or  downright  malice — 


A  Rejoiadek.  77 

lie  had  done  his  best  to  lead  them.  He  has  elected  the  latter 
course,  and  has  thereby  exhibited  himself  in  a  light  hardly 
consistent  with  his  position  as  a  "teacher  in  Israel."  But 
though  the  Bishop  is  silent  his  Vicar  conies  to  the  rescue. 
Such  a  procedure  recalls  td  one's  mind  the  words  of  the  memo- 
rable Pym :  "  I  dare  not  fight,"  says  the  Bishop,  "  but  I  can 
wink  and  hold  out  my  iron  " — this  Vicar.  "  It  is  a  simple 
one,  but  what  though  ?  It  will  toast  cheese,  and  it  will  cndun^ 
cold  as  another  man's  sword  will ;  and  there's  the  humor  of 
it.^''  The  "strictures"  would  appear  to  have  operated  vari- 
ously to  judge  from  the  skits  in  your  columns  of  the  last  few 
days.  They  affected  the  bram  as  well  of  those  who  claimed  to 
understand  them  as  of  those  who  proclaimed  they  did  not. 
The  Vicar  himself  confesses  he  takes  such  things  hy  the  yard 
— owing  perhaps  to  the  millinery  tendencies  of  his  theology. 
I  am  not  sufficiently  skilled  in'  pathology  to  reconcile  such 
conflicting  results.  Their  professed  object,  however,  is  to  re- 
vindicate the  damaged  reputation  of  the  Bishop  as  a  scholar, 
theologian  and  doctrinal  historian  ;  but  unfortunately  for  him, 
their  blatant  and  boisterous  dishonesty  is  so  damning,  that  they 
but  encumber  him,  while  they  convict  the  writer  of  a  readiness 
and  ability  to  glut  his  dupes  with  misstatements,  falsehoods 
and  calumnies  reeking  with  infamy.  In  his  effort  to  "serve 
God  l)y  well-meant  lies "  —  pious  frauds,  let  me  call  them, 
since  he  likes  a  euphemism — he  has  but  slipped  off  the  motley 
mask  from  hoof  and  tail,  and  it  will  appear  by  the  time  I  get 
through  with  him  that  the  Bishop's  worst  enemy  is  one  who 
just  noio  professes  to  be  of  his  own  household. 

The  word  of  God  aptly  describes  such  as  he  :  "  Their  throat 
is  an  open  sepulchre,  with  their  tongues  they  have  used  deceit ; 
the  poison  of  asps  is  under  their  lips,  their  mouth  is  full  of 
cursing  and  bitterness."  A  seventh  thing  the  Lord  detesteth 
— "  A  deceitful  witness  that  uttereth  lies  " ;  "  the  detractor  is 
the  abomination  of  men  " — "  a  false  witness  shall  not  be  un- 
punished, and  he  that  speaketh  lies  shall  not  escape.''^  The 
Vicar  has  placed  the  judgment  in  my  hands,  but  I  will  not 
execute  it.  I  shall  but  point  out  how  malevolent,  belligerent, 
busy  and  zealous  he  has  been  in  committing  these  execrable 


78  Ii'BE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Bins  of  calumny  and  detraction,  and  I  will  then  hand  him  over 
to  the  ve:ifi;eance  of  your  readers.  At  this  moment  he  is,  per- 
haps, chuckling  over  this  reflection  :  "  The  scourges  which 
alHict  mankind  shall  not  come  near  me;  for  I  have  made  lies 
my  refuge  and  under  falsehood  liUve  I  hid  myself."  He  is 
douhtless,  too,  ohlivious  of  the  reply:  "Forasmuch  as  you 
have  put  your  trust  in  calumny  ....  this  iniquity  and  your 
ruin  shall  he  like  tliat  of  a  high  wall,  whose  breaking  cometh 
suddenly  at  an  instant.  It  shall  he  broken  as  the  breaking  of 
a  potter's  vessel  that  is  shivered  in  pieces,  and  there  shall  not 
be  found  in  the  bursting  of  it  a  shard  to  take  tire  from  the 
hearth  or  to  draw  a  little  water  out  of  the  pit." 

In  the  olden  time  they  studied  Aristotle  at  Oxford,  but  what 
cares  he  for  logic  ?  The  stomach  of  a  Protestant  ritualist  could 
not  brook  such  a  stranger.  How  establish  a  fellowship  between 
it  and  ritualism  —  "a  white-washed  abortion,"  a  " bastard 
Popery,"  with  its  "  stinking,  greasy,  anti-Christian  and  execra- 
ble Orders,"  as  they  are  called  by  that  great  Anglican  cham- 
■|)ion,  Fulke.  These  are  not  my  words,  but  those  of  genuinely 
logical  Protestants  who  scorn  to  "  steal  the  livery  of  heaven  to 
bcrve  the  devil  in  " — to  masquerade  in  clothes  stolen  from  the 
Catholic  Church,  to  deck  themselves  out  with  shreds  and 
tatters  of  Catholic  doctrine  in  the  vain  hope  to  pass  themselves 
off  atid  im])ose  themselves  on  the  world  as  ''  true  Catholics." 
How  could  logic  comport  itself  with  such  a  sham  and  impos- 
ture ?  The  Vicar  professes  a  love  for  "  honest  speech."  So 
do  I,  and  I  will  share  it  with  him. 

Is  it  to  be  wondered  at,  then,  that  my  opponent  has  not  met 
my  argument  i}i  one  single  particular  ?  A  more  ignominious 
failure,  a  more  miserable  collapse  of  an  attempted  defence  of 
one  Oxford  man  by  another  is  not  on  record.  He  simply 
abandoned  it  and  betook  himself,  as  he  says,  "  to  supply  the 
public  with  a  little  thesaurus  or  treasury  of  argument  against 
the  vain  boasting  of  Romanist  controversialists."  After  six 
weeks'  labor  with  "  copious  and  exhaustive  indices "  we  get 
from  this  "  busy  priest  "  what  ?  Simply  a  tailless  little  mouse 
so  far  as  the  question  under  discussion  goes.  He  filled  your 
columns  with  quotations  from  a  cloud  of  Catholic  priests, 


A    ItEJOINDKR.  79 

bishops  and  Popes,  Yery  edifying  reading,  of  course,  but  as 
germane  to  our  subject  as  an  argument  on  the  parallax  of  the 
moon.  lie  might  have  reheved  the  monotony,  and  brightened 
the  picture  somewhat  by  introducing  a  few  rituahstic  "  Fathers," 
but  perhaps  such  a  suggestion  would  be  premature  and  might 
be  taken  as  a  juke.     Ahsit ! 

In  addition  to  the  counts  in  my  indictment  already  laid 
against  my  opponent  and  proved  in  my  liesume,  I  now  add 
another  to  the  effect  that  no  writer  witliin  my  knowledge  lias 
ever  been  guilty  of  more  conscious  and  deliberate,  unparalleled 
and  unblushing  suppression  of  the  truth,  as  I  will  clearly  show 
in  my  critique  on  the  "Strictutes."  Your  readers  will  be  the 
jury  to  whom  I  confidently  submit  the  issue.  I  have  no  inten- 
tion of  wandering  off  or  allowing  him  to  draw  me  away  into 
the  mazes  of  his  rhapsody,  but  I  will  cover  tlie  ground  pretty 
effectually,  without,  I  trust,  an  undue  demand  upon  your 
space,  and  without  violence  to  the  logical  instincts  of  interested 
readers. 


LETTER  II. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A  REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  will  take  up  the  Yicar's  letters,  seven  in  all,  serio 
tim,  and  I  will  paragraph  them.*  I  will  also  adopt  his  manner 
of  referring  to  mine.  This  will  conduce  to  clearness  and  ena- 
ble your  readers  to  track  him  with  me  through  his  long  laby- 
rinth of  falsehood  and  sophistry,  inconsistency  and  misrepre- 
sentation. The  blood-stains  by  the  way  will  witness  for 
themselves. 

There  is  little  in  his  first  letter  to  the  point  beyond  appeals 
ad  misfi7'iG07'diam.  "  Cry-baby  "  is  its  key-note.  He  protests 
against  the  use  of  the  "  shillalah."  It  is  always  associated,  you 
know,  with  the  "poor  Irish,"  as  he  calls  them.     He  prefers  a 

'  It  became  impossible  to  carry  this  out. 


80  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

club  and  uses  it  riglit  vigorously.  I  do  not  object.  M}'  own 
liglit  weapon  has  a  history.  I  do  not  wonder  that  an  English- 
nian  objects  to  its  lightning  flashing  around  his  head.  Before 
the  foot  of  the  Saxon  had  cursed  the  soil  of  Ireland  her  lovely 
virgin  daughters  could  walk  abroad  unprotected,  though 
adorned  with  gems  and  gold,  and  they  knew  it : 

Sir  Knight !  I  feel  not  the  least  alarm, 

No  son  of  Erin  will  ofFer  me  harm — 

For  though  they  love  women  and  golden  store, 

Sir  Kaight  !  they  love  honor  and  vii'tue  more. 

T^o  parent,  brother  or  husband  need  worry,  and  Ireland  had 
no  liendish  Pall  Mall  Gazette  disclosures.  With  the  advent 
to  her  shores  of  the  bestial  English  landlord  the  "shillalah" 
was  in  some  sort  consecrated  to  woman's  service,  when 

On  the  one  side  stood  virtue  and  Erin, 
On  the  other  the  Saxon  and  guilt. 

Ireland's  sons  stood  by  Ireland's  daughters  and  the  result  was 
an  oft-told  tale.  Indeed  "  it's  a  way  they  have  in  Ould  Ire- 
land." I  thank  the  Vicar  for  his  magnanimous  avoAval  of  the 
service  it  has  ronilered  in  her  cause  whose  honor  is  so  dear  to 
every  truly  Christian  heart  and  to  every  Catholic  maiden,  wife 
and  mother.  I  will  take  it  with  me  as  I  follow  him,  and 
though  he  is,  by  all  the  rules  of  deceut,  manly  debate,  a  contro- 
versial outlaw,  I  ^vill  use  it  sparingly — to  a  degree. 

Parag.  3. — Here  he  tries  to  set  up  a  breastv/ork  and  writes 
five  sections.  'Twere  better  for  him  had  he  taken  his  chances 
without  it.  I  appeal  to  your  readers  that  from  Mrst  to  last  I 
did  not,  and  did  not  undertake  to,  discuss  on  pi'inciple  the  why 
and  the  %oherefore  of  CathoUc  devotion  to  the  Inunaculate 
]\rother  of  God  ever  blessed.  The  logical  conditions  of  the 
controversy,  it  seemed  to  me,  did  not  permit  it.  That,  how- 
ever, I  offered  to  do  on  the  public  platform,  but  my  opponents, 
discreetly  as  it  now  appears,  refused  to  meet  me.  I  referred, 
by  way  of  explanation,  not  of  defence,  to  the  Incarnation  as 
the  formal,  eflicient  and  linal  cause  of  that  devotion.    I  intended 


A  Rejoindek.  81 

thereby  to  furnish  Protestants  j?enerally  witli  a  j'ww  sto  (a 
whereon  to  stand)  from  which  they  might  l)e  able  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  heights  of  the  Catholic  philosophy  of  this  mat- 
ter. For  however  our  love  and  devotion  may  delight  to  paint 
the  glories  of  the  mother  we  never  allow  them  to  approach 
near  the  incommunicable  glory  of  the  Son.  But  we  delight  to 
meditate  on  the  nearness  of  the  glorified  flesh  of  Jesus  to  that 
Mary,  Its  original  source.  A  man  must  be  a  Pagan  who  is 
not  moved  by  such  a  mystery. 

The  Catholic  intellect  and  heart,  nevertheless,  for  its  last 
resting-place,  even  here,  ever  goes  back  to  that  Adorable  Heart 
whence  all  graces  come ;  wliich  made  Mary  what  she  is,  "  the 
Chief  of  Saints" — the  great  masterpiece  of  that  only  Redemp- 
tion, which  is  in  Christ  our  Lord.  These  were  my  thoughts 
when  referring  to  the  Incarnation  in  my  "  Pesiune,"  M}'  op- 
ponent here  complains  that  I  gave  him  and  the  Bishop  '*  ele- 
mentary instruction  on  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  as  if 
we  did  not  realize  (probably  far  better  tlian  himself)  that  this 
is  the  foundation  mystery  of  our  faith."  Well,  us  to  the 
Bishop's  knowledge  I  have  no  data  l)y  which  to  pronounce, 
nnlocss^  follovring  Iris  Vicar's  style  of  reasoning,  I  should  con- 
clude, from  two  blunders  and  seriously  damaging  misstate- 
ments, to  bis  general  unreliability. 

"^he  Vicar  himself,  however,  has  been  more  cominunimtive. 
Hl  oves  "to  contribute  some  solid  information"  on  every 
question,  at  ail  times,  and  to  everybody.  It  is  a  way  every 
ritualistic  pseudo-"  priest "  has.  He  is  ready  to  instruct  the 
Pope,  tlie  Catholic  church  ancient  and  modern,  and  Ii'.  iwn 
Anglican  Protestant  Bishop,  though  should  the  latter  lai!  to 
agree  with  him,  he  snaps  his  finger  in  his  face  and — <joes  to 
gaol, !  "  Hast  thou  seen  a  man  wise  in  his  own  conceit  ?  There 
shall  be  more  hope  of  a  fool  than  of  liim."  Proverbs  xxvi.  12. 
The  Vicar  has  put  himself  on  record.  "  Wwds  are  th/n//s," 
he  has  told  us.  I  acce]>t  bis  principle,  and  from  it  will  prove 
that  he  still  needs  "  elementary  instruction  "  on  the  Incarna- 
tion. I  quote  from  the  synopsis  of  his  sermon  as  follows: 
"The  Holy  Virgin  Mother  of  God  "  is  "dear,  as  the  hallowed 
vessel  from  whose  substance  God  the  Holy  OJtost  took  the 


82  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ip.sum. 

sacred  humanity  of  our  Lord  Jesus^  He  is  not  copying  now 
from  "St.  Liguori,"  "Tlie  Raccolta,"  Pusey,  Littledale  or 
"  Janus  ";  be  is  giving  ns  a  little  theology  on  bis  own  account. 
And  what  puzzle-beadedness  and  bewilderment!  Wbat  can 
tbis  Oxford  theologian  of  immense  pretence  and  equal  inca- 
pacity mean?  I  thought  it  was  God  the  Son  who  became  In- 
carnate by  the  Holy  Ghost — "  took  earth  from  the  earth  .... 
received  liesh  from  the  Hesh  of  Mary  "  (St.  Aug.),  assumed  and 
raised  buumn  nature  and  united  it  to  bis  Divbie  Person  by 
hypostatic  union — "  by  taking  of  the  manhood  into  God,"  as 
the  Athanasian  Creed  has  it.  I  never  heard  before  that  God 
the  Father  or  God  the  Holy  Ghost  "  took  "  flesh  and  assumed 
either  Mary's  humanity  or  Christ's  sacred  humanity.  "  Words 
are  things"  the  Vicar  should  remember  from  the  Arian  Con- 
troversy, But  perhaps  he  is  beyond  me  here,  as  be  has  been 
reading  the  Roman  Catholic  Fathers  for  "«?'»  loeeks^^  with 
"  copious  and  exhaustive  indices  " — that  is,  he  has  read  them 
Ilebraici.lly  beginning  where  others  usually  end.  "  Six  weeks' " 
instruction,  however,  would  not  qualify  a  Catholic  child  for 
the  sacr.iment  of  Confirmation  and  I  ought  not  to  be  too  exact- 
ing, seeing  that  the  Anglican  church  and  her  theology  is 
"gangrened"  wath  heresy  on  that  "foundation  mystery  of  our 
faith  " — the  Incarnation. 

Let  me  prove  this  serious  proposition.  I  quote  from  the 
Union  Revieio,  an  Anglican  publication  of  the  very  highest 
authority  among  Ritualists  themselves , 

"A  great  deal  of  the  shrinking  felt  by  Anglicans  from 
giving  our  Lady  due  honor,  arises  from  the  lingering  effects  of 
heretical  teaching,  or  unconsciously  heretical  belief,  on  the 
mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  Kestorianism prevails  to  a  very 
great  extent  among  English  churchmen,  and  its  withering 
effects  are  very  dijjicxdt  to  shahe  off,  even  by  those  who  have 

long  become  orthodox  in  their  theoretical  creed It  is 

also  true,  and  deserves  consideration,  that  there  has  hee7i  hither- 
to no  innrked  te?idency  to  heresy  on  the  subject  of  the  Incar- 
nation among  Horn  v  Catholics,  lohile,  where  the  dignity  of 
the  Blessed  Virgin  has  heen  underrated,  heresies  have 
speedily  crept  in It  is  sadly  true  that  many  persons 


A  Kejoindek.  83 

in  the  English  chnroh  place  onr  Blessed  Lord  exactly  where 
the  Catholic  church  places  a  saint.  They  see  nothing  wrong 
in  asking  Him  to  pray  for  them,  and  do  (in  words  which 
Canon  Oakeley  hesitates  in  ap})lying  to  English  churchmen, 
hut  tvhich  he  mi<jht  hc.ve  truly  used)  seem  to  imagine  that  we 
suppose  our  Lord  to  mediate  or  intercede  with  tlie  Eternal 
Father  in  the  same  sense  in  which  we  believe  the  Blessed 
Virgin  to  mediate  or  intercede  with  Ilim.  They  .'ipeak  to  our 
Blessed  Lord  as  if  he  loas  a  human  heing  with  a  h^l7nan  per- 
sonality, and  in  consequence  their  attitude  of  mind  towards 
Ilim  and  towards  His  Blessed  Mother  would  be  so  precisely 
the  same  that  no  wonder  they  shrink  from  the  comparison." 
([)p.  400-401).  So  much  for  an  Anglican  on  Anglicanism. 
It  is  a  confession  on  the  doctrinal  corruption  prevalent  within 
his  connnunion  more  honorable  to  the  writcir's  clear-headedness 
and  straight-forwardness  than  a  Ritualist  is  in  the  habit  of 
making. 

I  now  introduce  a  witness  of  a  different  kind,  but  of  world- 
wide authority — Cardinal  Newman.  Even  the  Yicar  con- 
descends to  patronize  him.  "Few  Protestants,"  says  the  cardi- 
nal, "  have  any  real  perception  of  the  doctrine  of  God  and 
man  in  one  person.  They  speak  in  a  dreamy,  shadowy  way 
of  Christ's  divinity ;  but  when  their  meaning  is  sifted,  you  will 
tind  them  very  slow  to  commit  themselves  to  any  statement 

sufficient  to  show  that  it  is  Catholic Then,  when  they 

comment  on  the  Gospels,  they  will  speak  of  Christ,  not  sim]ily 
and  consistently  as  God,  but  as  a  being  made  up  of  God 
and  man,  partly  one  and  partly  the  other,  or  between 
both,  or  as  a  man  inhaltited  by  a  special  divine  presence. 
Sometimes  they  even  go  on  to  deny  that  He  was  the  Son  of 
God  in  Heaven,  saying  that  He  became  the  Son  when  He  was 
conceived  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  and  they  are  shocked,  and  think 
it  a  mark  both  of  revenaice  and  good  sense  to  be  shocked, 
when  the  Man  is  spoken  of  simply  and  plainly  as  God.  They 
cannot  bear  to  have  it  said,  except  as  a  figure  or  mode  of  speak- 
ing, that  God  had  a  human  body,  or  that  God  suffered 

Such,  I  believe,  is  the  character  of  the  Protestant  notions 
among  us  on  the  divinity  of  Christ,  whether  among  members 


8i  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

of  ilie  Anglican  communion,  or  dissenters  from  it,  excepting 
a  section  of  the  former."  In  view  of  these  authorities  and  the 
Vicar's  exliibition  of  his  own  theology,  I  would  like  an  oppor- 
tunity to  examine  him  publicly  on  the  how  of  the  union  of  God 
the  AVord  with  humanity.  The  Union  Review  and  Cardinal 
Newman  might  get  strong  support,  liah  !  The  insolent  and 
shameless  effrontery  of  such  a  nondescript  theological  nonentity 
as  this  Vicar  ])resumiiig  to  sit  in  judgment  on  the  doctrine  and 
practice  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  regard  to  the  gracious  and 
Immaculate  Mother  of  Jesus  Christ,  is  simply  disgusting!  In 
the  sight  of  God  nmch  may  be  forgiven  him,  but  it  will  not  be 
for  any  lessons  of  genuine  love  of  the  "  Woman,  above  all 
women  glorified,"  which  he  learned  from  Anglicanism  ;  but  in 
the  siiiht  oi  man  he  ouy-ht  to  show  more  ij;ratitude  to  a  Church 
on  the  scraps  and  crumbs  of  whose  table  the  religious  school  to 
which  he  belongs  depends  for  any  reason  it  has  for  being 
at  all. 

To  clear  himself  from  my  "unscrupulous"  charges  he  gives 
a  long  quotation  from  his  sermon.  This  offers  me  a  good  deal 
of  satisfaction.  lie  preached  it,  I  believe,  as  the  newspapers 
announced,  after  I  had  nearly  finished  my  "  Resume." 
Though  this  looks  very  much  like  an  attempt  to  create  evi- 
dence for  his  case  /  do  not  object.  To  force  from  an  enemy 
60  much  truth  as  it  contains  is  no  small  cause  for  joy.  Such 
words  of  respect  for  the  Mother  of  God  were  never  before 
heard  in  a  Protestant  church  in  this  city ;  but  they  have  no 
"sanction  in  the  church  from  which  he  holds  the  license 
whereby  he  utters  them.  What  a  cruel  irony!  And  yet  in 
the  most  untilial  fashion  he  gives  that  church  a  sharp  blow  in 
the  face.  In  his  very  first  letter  in  this  matter  he  said  that 
"  the  Church  of  England  preserved  her  balance  well  under  the 
circumstances,  and  observed  four  feasts  "of  the  Blessed  Virgin. 
I  pointed  out  her  mode  of  observance,  and  asked  him  to  tell 
the  public  why  he  suppressed  the  ffth  feast  in  his  church  cal- 
endar— that  of  the  "conception  of  Mary."  He  gave  us  no 
stricture  in  reply.  The  truth  is  I  riddled  his  statement  so 
Itadlv  that  he  swallowed  it,  and  in  shame  and  humiliation 
straightaway  confesses  judgment  by  saying  that  it  is  "the  sad 


A  Rejoinder.  85 

and  sorrowful  lot  of  the  English  cliurch  ....  to  have  to 
wear  the  a])pearance  of  those  who  fail  to  yield  the  Blessed 
Virgin  her  proper  honor.  Her  preachers  are  unable,  through 
no  fault  of  their  own,  to  eulogize  the  Blessed  Mother  of  God 
as  it  is  meet  they  should,  without  being  compelled  to  hedge 
their  expressions  with  so  many  ccnUiotis  about  false  doctrhie 
and  ^practice  in  regard  to  her,  that  many  a  one  shrinks,  &c." 
Surely  here  are  concessions  enough  to  utterly  destroy  and  anni- 
hilate any  logical  defence  of  Anglicanism,  and  yet  the  same 
preacher  makes  accusations  against  the  Catholic  Church,  which 
render  his  concessions  simply  monstrous.  But  the  consoling 
logic  is  charming !  Some  persons  sin  by  excess :  therefore  I 
am  justified  in  sinning  by  defect !  This  is  the  miserable  sub- 
terfuge, this  the  doctrine  put  forth  in  the  name  of  a  Church, 
which  clamors  for  recognition  as  a  "  branch  "  (save  the  mark  !) 
of  the  Church  of  God — '*  the  pillar  and  the  ground  of  truth." 
Ahslt  Uasphemia !  Of  course  the  Vicar  means  to  say,  "Look 
at  me,  however!  I  am  a  Catholic,"  but  no  "Romanist."  "No 
pent-up  Utica  contracts  my  powers"  —  of  self-exaltation. 
Church  of  England :  Church  of  "  my  priestly  vows  " — scat ! 
What  care  I  for  your  "  cautions  about  false  doctrine."  For 
"six  weeks  "  I  have  been  scavenging  the  works  of  the  "Early 
Church  Fathers  concerning  the  Blessed  Virgin,"  and  I  must 
admit,  I  stand  "  aghast "  at  the  sublime  titles  given  to  "  the 
holy  Theotokos."  I  find  "that  very  excellent  things  have 
been  spoken  of  her  by  divines  of  all  ages,"  but  their  panegyrics 
in  her  praise  have  so  confused,  perverted  and  knocked  out  of 
joint  "the  faith  once  for  all  delivered  to  the  saints"  that  I  felt 
it  to  be  my  duty  and  by  virtue  of  my  "  priestly  vow "  to 
restore  the  balance.  This  I  have  done  to  my  own  entire  satis- 
faction,  in  my  beautiful  and  eloquent  sermon,  and  as  a  "  Pope  " 
in  my  own  right.  I  may  now  well  believe,  indeed  I  know, 
that  out  of  j)ure  gratitude  she  will  feel  obliged  "to  love, 
lienor  and  pray  specially  for  " — me.  And  I  protest  that  the 
fact  that  one  of  those  "poor  Irish"  was  after  me  with  the 
"  shillalah  "  had  no  part  in  my  inspiration."  Ha !  Ha ! !  Ha ! ! ! 
Now  when  did  the  " English  Church "  become  so  "cautious 
about  false  doctrine  ? "     Is  it  since  she  had  as  bishops  Hoadly, 


86  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

Whately,  and  Hampden  (one  Cambridge  and  two  Oxford  men), 
the  first  of  whom  was  an  Arian,  the  second  a  Sabellian,  while  the 
notorious  Hampden  (who  died  in  1808)  was  a  sort  of  conglom- 
erated compound  of  both,  or  something  more  infamous.  The 
Tractarian  party  brought  a  charge  of  Arianism  against  him  in 
]833;  a  University  Statute  of  censure  for  heterodoxy  in  his 
Bainpton  lectures  stood  against  him  in  1836,  but  it  made  no 
difference;  he  was  made  Kegius  Professor  of  Divinity  in  Ox- 
ford !  His  luck  was  in.  That  orthodox  saint  (!)  Lord  John 
Russell,  in  1847  nominated  him  to  the  See  of  Hereford.  A 
violent  opposition  was  made.  Many  of  the  Bishops  (to  their 
honor)  remonstrated  publicly.  The  Queen,  however,  as 
spiritual  head  of  the  church,  gives  Anglican  Bishops  their 
jurisdiction,  and  Lord  John's  pet  was  "consecrated" — to 
what  ? 

Is  it  since  she  sent  Bishop  Colenso  a  missionary  to  the 
African  heathen,  to  become,  as  he  did,  in  spite  of  all  attempts 
to  disci])line  him,  an  apostle  of  infidelity  to  the  country  that 
sent  him  ?  Is  it  since  the  publication  by  Anglican  Ministers 
of  that  blasphemous  book  ^'Jissays  and  Reviews'''' f  The 
writers  were  prosecuted,  but  the  Privy  Council,  the  ultimate 
court  of  appeal  in  Anglican  theology,  and  in  which  Bradlaugh, 
Chamberlain,  Morley  or  Labouchere  may  sit  to-morrow,  sus- 
tained them.  They  retained  their  benefices,  endowments, 
social  position  and  hopes  of  preferment  in  the  very  church 
whose  vital  doctrines  they  scorned  and  scoffed  at.  Hear  Dr. 
Pusey  on  the  matter :  "  The  Essays  and  lievieios  let  loose  a 

tide  of  scepticism  upon  the  young  and  uninstructed 

Their  writers  threw  doubts  on  everything.  They  took  for 
f^janted  that  the  ancient  faith  had  been  overthrown,  and  the 
Essays  were  mostly  a  long  trumpet-note  of  victories  won  (they 
assumed)  without  any  cost  to  them  over  the  faith,  in  Ger- 
many." Lectures  on  Daniel^  p.  1.  Is  it  since  Mr.  Gorham, 
an  Angl'ican  Minister^  denied  Baptismal  Regeneration  and 
was  sustained  in  his  denial  by  the  Privy  Council,  which  over- 
ruled Gorham's  Bishop  and  Archbishop  %  This  doctrine  is  now 
an  open  question  in  a  Church  claiming  to  be  Christian  and 
Catholic !     Thirteen  distinguished  men,  including  Pusey  and 


A  IIejoinder,  87 

Manning,  signed  a  public  protest.  It  was  of  no  avail,  and  six 
of  them  became  CatlioHcs.  Pusey  never  could  digest  the 
heresy,  and  died  with  it  still  on  his  stomach. 

It  is  now  sufficiently  clear  that  no  form  of  opinion  comes 
amiss  in  the  Anglican  Church.  It  is  simply  the  lurking-place 
of  the  most  omnigenous  latitudinarianism.  Unitarians,  Sabel- 
lians,  Nestorians,  Pelagians,  Utilitarians,  Methodists,  Calvinists, 
Swedenborgians,  Irvingites,  Free-thinkens — all  these  it  can 
tolerate  in  its  very  bosom  ;  from  Hampden,  Colenso  and  the 
writers  of  the  Essays  and  lieviews  down  to  the  meretricious 
ritualistic  pseudo-"  priest "  who  swaggers  about  with  the 
"Koman  coHar''  round  his  neck,  that  historic  badge  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Priesthood — all  these  are  acconmiodated,  but 
Rome  it  cannot  abide.  These  are  facts  long  patent  to  the 
world  and  cannot  be  disproved.  I  know  its  history  well.  The 
Anglican  Church  has  beconie  one  great  theological  graveyard. 
Over  its  corpse  hovers  the  vulture  of  Ritualism  in  stolen 
Roman  Catholic  plumes,  and  while  it  strives  "  to  create  a  soul 
under  the  ribs  of  death,"  it  screams  out  its  eternal  requiem. 

I  regret  that  the  twaddie  indulged  in  by  my  opponent  in  his 
first  letter  has  obliged  me  to  be,  perhaps,  prolix  in  clearing 
decks.  But,  as  I  have  been  thus  enabled  to  scatter  to  the  wind 
and  to  dispose  of  a  kind  of  rubbish  spread  all  over  his  "  Stric- 
tures," I  may  be  pardoned.  I  will  make  the  engagement  as 
short  as  possible.    In  my  next  I  will  plunge  in  mcdias  res. 


LETTER  III. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   REJOINDER 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Glohe  : 

Sir, — In  opening  his  second  letter  the  Yicar  declares  his  in- 
tention to  exai  line  whether  I  have  properly  performed  the 
penance  he  had  set  me  for  my  "  impertinence"  in  impugning 
Bishop  Ivingdon's  scholarship  and  honesty.  I  am  beginning 
to  fear  that  with  all  the  assistance  he  gets  from  our  books,  his 


88  Ipse,  Irs  a,  Ipsum. 

progress  in  the  study  of  moral  theology  is  slow.  He  evidently 
does  not  yet  know  that  the  sacrament  of  the  church  which  he 
parodies  consists  of  three  parts — Contrition^  Confession  and 
Satisfaction.  This  a  "  priest  "  ouglit  to  know,  no  matter  how 
"  busy  "  he  may  be.  However,  I  am  not  just  now  a  lit  subject 
for  his  ministrations,  kindly  meant  though  they  be.  I  have  no 
contrition,  I  make  no  confession,  and  as  for  satisfaction,  well, 
he  has  about  as  much  authority  to  impose  a  penance  as  a  Sal- 
vation Army  lassie.  But  let  that  pass.  Such  newly  found 
zeal  and  regard  for  the  Episcopal  office  in  a  ritualistic  '"father" 
(ye  gods !)  is  very  amusing.  The  late  Anglican  Bishop  Eraser 
of  Manchester  said  "  there  are  no  wox'ds  strong  enough  to  ex- 
press the  contempt  and  righteous  indignation  that  should  be 
felt  at  the  folly  of  '  ritualistic  sacerdotal  pretensions.'  "  He, 
of  course,  was  no  favorite  with  pseudo-"  priests,"  and  phantas- 
mal and  fantastic  imitators  of  Catholic  rites  and  ceremonies. 
The  reason  is  well  known  and  one  of  the  causes  famous.  Lord 
Penzance,  at  the  instigation  of  the  Bishop,  sent  a  '•  sacerdotal 
pretender,"  Rev.  Mr.  Green,  to  gaol,  so  that  from  being  ^pirate 
of  Catholic  doctrines  and  practices  he  became  to  his  fellow  rit- 
ualists a  martyr  of  Penzance.  But  the  Rev.  Harry  Cowgill, 
Mr.  Green's  curate,  during  his  long  imprisonment,  carried  on 
boldly,  and  despite  the  Bishop,  at  all  events  for  a  while,  all  the 
inhibited  ceremonies — altar  lights,  the  mixed  chalice  and 
Eucharistic  Vestments.  "Priestly  vows"  and  the  oath  of 
Canonical  obedience  sat  as  lightly  on  the  Rev.  Harry  as  they 
do  on  every  ritualistic  "  Pope  "  when  anyone  in  authority  calls 
into  question  his  pontifical  prerogatives,  or  the  infallibility  of 
his  views  either  on  ecclesiastical  law  or  the  doctrine  of  the 
primitive  church.  Bishop  Eraser  described  Ritualism  as  pos- 
sessed of  "  the  anarchical  temper  which  will  recognize  no  law 
but  its  own  will,  which  would  wreck  a  great  church  for  the 
sake  of  preserving  an  Ornaments'  Rubric "  ;  but  he  hated  it, 
not  wisely  but  too  well,  and  he  died  of  a  broken  heart  about 
two  years  ago.  Again  :  the  present  Anglican  Bishop  Ryle  of 
Liverpool  recently  preached  on  Baptism  and  the  Holy  Euchar- 
ist— sacraments  which  hold  in  the  (Christian  faith  a  place  wliicli 
is  undeniably  essential,  fundamental  and  elementary.     He  said 


A  Rejoinder.  89 

that  they  are  "  of  little,  or,  at  all  events,  of  secondary  import- 
ance," he  declared  roundly  that  "  the  Church  of  England  has 
no  altar,  no  sacritice,  no  sacerdotal  priests,"  and  that  the  Kitu- 
alists  had  reduced  the  church  to  a  state  of  "  lawless  anarchy." 
The  Ritualistic  Church  News  (from  which  I  ;ote)  "baited" 
the   unfortunate   Bishop  in  the  most  merciless  fashion.     It 

'  called  him  the  ''  Dunce  of  the  Episcopate,"  described  his  teach- 
ing as  ''  silly,"  "  exploded  over  and  over  again,"  "  nonsense," 
"railing,"  "shocking,"  and  told  him  that  the  mininmm  to  be 
expected  of  him  was  "  to  hold  his  tongue  "  so  that  he  might 
not  "utter  the  pernicious  nonsense  he  generally  talks  when  he 
speaks  at  all."  Again,  at  a  church  congress.  Bishop  Ryle  said  : 
"  So  long  as  the  Church  of  England  is  infected  with  semi- 
Romanism  on  the  extreme  right  and  semi-unbelief  on  the  ex- 
treme left,  and  cannot  cure  or  expel  the  disease,  so  long,  we 
may  depend  on  it,  our  Nonconformist  brethren  will  never  em- 
bark in  our  ship."  The  Bishop  here  pays  a  Avell-deserved 
compliment  to  the  intelligence  of  his  dissenting  Protestant 
brethren  who  are  not  ashamed  of  their  name.  He,  too.  was 
obliged  to  "  gaol "  some  of  his  "  sacerdotal  pretenders."  Your 
readers  will  remember  that  at  the  time  of  the  celebration  of  the 
Queen's  jubilee  in  this  city  the  Rev,  Bell  Cox  was  languishing 
in  a  Liverpool  prison  for  aping  the  Catholic  Church,  "  playing 
priest "  and  practising  a  "  bastard  Popery."  The  Vicar  pub- 
licly declared  this  a  sufficient  reason  why  the  jubilee  should  be 
observed  by  a  fast — he  thought  it  such  an  outrage  that  a  con- 

'  frere  should  be  hindered  in  his  career  of  "  lawless  anarchy  "  by 
his  own  Bishop  and  he  an  Episcopal  "  Dunce."  His  pretended 
defence  of  Bishop  Kingdon  exhibits  humor  hardly  inferior  in 
kind,  and  supplies  some  excellent  touches  of  light  comedy. 
The  notion  that  he  is  anxioue  about  his  office,  scholarship  or 
honesty,  is  a  "  goak  "  of  that  peculiar  flavor  which  would  have 
delighted  the  lamented  Artemus.  The  Bishop  must  feel  like 
saying  to  him : 

Perhaps  it  was  well  to  dissemble  your  love, 
But  why  did  you  kick  me  down  stairs  ? 

He  launches  into  his  work  with  a  sprightly  escapade  of  ten 


9iJ  ll'SE,  IrsA,   Ip8UM. 

paragraphs  whicli  he  calls  an  "  Outline  history  of  the  Vulgate." 
It  is  empty,  futile  and  trumpery,  and  of  no  importance  as 
respect  the  points  at  issue ;  it  is  sim{)ly  a  jet  from  one  of  the 
spiracles  of  the  cuttle-Hsh  settling  himself  into  position  for 
work.  I  will  say  but  a  word  on  it.  lie  gives  it,  he  says,  that 
your  readers  may  perceive  the  shallowness  and  worthlessness  of 
my  remarks  about  St.  Augustine  and  Jerome,  and  the  hollow- 
ness  of  the  psiaan  I  sang  over  Clement's  edition  of  the  Latin 
Bible.  I  submit  that  he  has  not  invalidated  one  single  state- 
ment made  by  me  in  this  connection  :  and  I  sang  no  piean.  It 
is  not  in  my  line.  The  singing  was  done  by  a  chorus  of  the 
ablest  ProteKant  critics  who  have  written  in  praise  of  the  Vul- 
gate— Grotius,  Cappell,  Mills,  Walton,  Porter,  Westcott,  Dean 
Stanley,  Dr.  Roberts,  and  I  might  extend  the  list,  but  I  adhere 
to  the  names  already  cited  by  inc.  The  innnense  value  and 
authority  of  the  Vulgate,  and  its  matchless  importance  as 
interpretative  of  the  Greek  text  has  been  stated  by  all  the 
great  Protestant  writers.  This,  however,  is  not  the  question 
now  before  the  court. 

He  next  opens  another  spiracle  of  tlie  fish  on  the  "  working 
metliod  of  textual  criticism,"  and  finally  in  his  fourteenth  par- 
agraph approaches  the  questions  in  debate.  He  begins  at  once 
to  flounder,  but  the  hook  is  too  firmly  fixed  in  his  gills.  Noth- 
ing can  save  him — he  must  drown,  and  his  Episcopal  j97Y;!'c^</d 
must  go  under  with  him.  Oxford  sciolism,  though  it  wear  a 
mitre  or  masquerade  in  "Roman  collar,"  is  not  more  respect- 
able than  any  other  sham,  but  is  only  the  more  pernicious  in 
that  its  presumption  in  the  present  case  is  fully  commensurate 
with  its  ignorance. 

I  have  already  iisserted  the  Vicar's  "  mental  kinship  "  with 
his  great  precursor,  the  ciittle-fish.  In  his  effort  to  escape 
scrutiny  he  has  bettered  the  trick  of  his  prototype  by  injecting 
into  this  discussion  all  sorts  of  '■'■  foreign  matter  and  unsavory 
impuritiesP  His  "  strictures  "  for  the  most  part  are  about  as 
relevant  to  the  real  point  as  a  disquisition  on  the  Eocene,  Mio- 
cene and  Pleistocene  periods  in  geology  would  be.  Let  me 
"discharge  the  color  from  these  cuttle-fish  secretions"  by  a 
short  re-statement  of  the  issue. 


A  Rkjoindkk.  91 

Bishop  Kiiitijdon  put  forward  two  propositions  :  First,  tliat 
the  (piestion  was  between  Ipse  nid  Ipsa,  and  that  the  letter 
"rt"in  the  hitter  was  a  misprint  for  the  letter  "e"  in  the 
former ;  and  second,  that  the  Catholic  Church  based  on  this 
misprint  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Concej)ti()n  of  the  ever 
blessed  Mother  of  God.  I  challen<fed  both  propositions  and 
charged  tlie  Bishop  witli  suppressing,  either  througli  ignorance 
or  malice,  the  fact  that  the  reading  of  this  place  in  Gen.  iii.  15, 
was  a  very  ordinary  "  various  reading,"  and  that  this  was — 
IrsE,  Ipsa  and  Ipsum.  Had  he  thus  correctly  put  the  matter, 
of  course  his  little  nursery-tale  could  not  have  been  told,  and 
liis  lecture  would  have  lacked  an  embellisliment.  This  story, 
let  me  say,  was  to  the  lecture  as  the  very  "  snap  of  the  whip." 
This  "  misprint,"  so  called,  was  the  only  one  of  all  those  men- 
tioned by  the  Bishop  that,  to  his  mind,  entailed  important  and 
deplorable  consequences. 

To  explain  the  origin  of  this  three-fold  reading,  I  said  :  "  It 
is  admitted  on  all  hands  that  the  Hebrew  text,  the  fountain 
head,  such  as  we  have  it  now,  is  hopelessly  ambiguous."  In 
support  of  this  I  contented  myself  with  the  authority  of  two 
such  illustrious  scholars  as  Cardinals  Bellarmine  and  Baronius. 
Does  the  Vicar  offer  one  tittle  of  evidence  to  contradict  their 
testimony  ?  No !  His  tactics  are  those  of  the  bull  in  a  china- 
shop.  This  model  of  charity  and  urbanity  simply  calls  them 
"princes  of  deceit,"  "  forgers  "and  perjured  "  liars,"  and  consigns 
them  both  to  the  "  lake  that  burnetii  with  fire  and  brimstone." 
This  harsh  sentence  he  pronounces  in  the  very  teeth  of  a  deci- 
sion, binding  on  his  own  church,  given  by  the  Privy  Council  in 
the  Essay s-and- Reviews  case  in  1804,  by  which  Hell  and  Eternal 
Punishment  were  dismissed  and  with  costs  from  the  creed  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Tait  (the  late  Archbishop  of  Canterbury), 
then  Bishop  of  London,  concurred  in  the  judgment,  while  Long- 
ley  and  Thompson,  respectiv^ely  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  and 
York,  protested  against  it,  but  Gui  bono  f  The  Anglican  Church 
is  a  branch  of  the  national  police.  Her  ministers,  high  and  low, 
are  simply  members  of  the  force  and  must  take  their  doctrine 
from  the  courts  created  by  an  Act  of  Parliament  just  as  does 
the  policeman  who  locks  up  an  "  ordinary  drunk." 


92  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

"Without  going  into  details  I  will  shortly  vindicate  the  posi- 
tion I  took  on  tlie  authority  of  the  scandalously  maligned  Bel- 
lannine  and  Baronius,  viz. :  that  the  Hebrew  text  in  Gen.  iii. 
15,  as  elsewhere,  is  ambiguous. 

My  first  witness  will  be  the  Vicar's  uewly-made  acquaint- 
ance, De  Rttssi.  I  ask  your  readers  to  keep  clearly  in  mind 
that  I  am  not  now  discussing  the  relative  merits  of  the  three 
readings  from  a  critical  or  doctrinal  standpoint.  I  quote  De 
Rossi  here  to  show  In's  opinion  on  the  state  of  the  Hebrew 
text :  "  Few,  douhtful  and  altogether  unreliable  are  the  Hebrew 
MSS.  in  support  of  in  (that  is  Ipsa  I  add)  in  which  yod  \%  per- 
haps a  little  vaw^  If  the  Hebrew  text  were  free  from  ambi- 
guity why  use  the  words  '''' douhtfuV  and  '"'■  j)erhapa''''  about 
its  readings?  Rev.  Dr.  Roberts,  member  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment Company  of  Revisors,  ?ays :  "  The  truth  is,  that  the  real 
character  of  the  existing  Hebrew  text,  as  respects  absolute 
trustworthiness,  is  as  yet  undecided,  and  must  remain  so  until 
certain  great  objects  are  accom])lished.  There  must  be  a  more 
scientific  handling  of  all  the  materials  of  criticism.  IVfaimscripts 
and  versions  of  the  Hebrew  text  must  be  more  thoroughly 

investigated The  science  of  Old  Testament  textual 

criticism  is  still  in  a  comparatively  imperfect  condition,  so  that 
little  can  with  certainty  be  said  as  to  the  value  or  antiquity  of 
extant  manuscripts."  Dr.  Kennicott  in  his  work,  "  The  pres- 
ent printed  Hebrew  text  considered,"  Diss.  2,  p.  222,  gives 
fully  the  history  of  the  text,  and  says  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
it  is  now  very  defective  through  the  fault  of  copiers,  as  the 
ablest  Rabbins  acknowledge.  Appletonh  Cyclopedia,  to  which 
my  opponent  referred,  says :  ''  The  Hebrew  text  of  the  Old 
Testament  as  we  have  it  has  already  passed  through  many  re- 
visions. Of  the  primitive  text  we  have  little  positive  informa- 
tion." The  Septuagint  itself  differs  from  the  present  Hebrew 
text  in  more  than  two  thousand  places.  Of  course  I  do  not  say 
nor  admit  that  these  defects  and  ambiguities  in  the  Hebrew 
text  at  all  affect  the  authority  of  Holy  Scripture  as  a  guide  to 
truth  ;  such  a  contention  has  never  been  sustained  by  the  most 
ultra^rationalist  of  modern  times.  They  affect  the  forms 
rather  than  the  substance  of  words,  and  such  is  the  case  here. 


A  Rejoinder.  93 

Had  tlie  Bishop  known  the  true  state  of  the  reading,  or  know- 
ing it  put  it  truly,  he  could  not  have  told  his  little  story. 
Hence,  too,  a  little  more  knowledge  and  reflection  might  have 
led  the  Vicar  to  ahstain  from  his  attack  on  two  such  famous 
scholars  as  Bellarmine  and  Baronius,  which  I  here  declare  to  be 
a  vile  slander  and  calumny.  Besides,  it  was  uncanny  in  him 
to  suggest  to  sarcastic  readers  the  old  picture  of  a  "  live  asjs 
braying  over  a  dead  lion." 

He  says  I  have  not  "fulfilled  my  penance" — that  is,  I  have 
not  proved  my  assertion  "that  J/hsurn  as  a  various  reading  dis- 
putes the  place  of  Ipse  and  Ipsa  therein."  Before  "slaying 
the  dead  over  again,"  as  the  Greeks  say,  which  I  promise 
your  readers  very  eflfectually  to  do,  I  will  examine  his  "  Strict- 
ures" on  my  proof.  I  will  confine  myself  strictly  for  the 
present  to  the  case  I  made  in  my  "Resume."  I  claim  that  I 
am  entitled  to  a  verdict  against  the  Bishop  and  his  Vicar 
though  I  should  not  utter  another  word.  I  can  afford,  how- 
ever, to  be  indulgent,  remembering  that  while  "  it  is  excellent 
to  have  a  giant's  power,  it  is  tyrannous  to  use  it  as  a  giant." 
Such  is  the  strength  my  case  gives  me. 

I  quoted  so  great  a  Biblical  commentator  as  Cornelius  d 
L:vpide  to  this  effect:  "The  reading  here — Gen.  iii.  15 — is 
three-fold.  The  first  is  that  of  the  Hebrew  Codices,  which 
have  Ipsum  ....  and  so  reads  St.  Leo  and  Lipomanus." 
Now  I  have  no  Biblical  MSS.  in  either  Hebrew,  Greek  or 
Latin  in  my  Library ;  neither,  I  take  it,  has  the  Bishop  nor  his 
Vicar.  The  question  is  one  of  authority,  and  must  be  settled 
by  the  best  that  exists.     A  Lapide  is  among  the  very  highest. 

Here  is  my  opponent's  reply  to  him :  "  But  Cornelius  is  a 
very  weak  witness  for  a  start,  feeble  enough  to  condemn  the 
whole  case  with  costs  off  hand.  He  is  made  to  say  that  the 
word  Ipsum  is  found  in  Hebrew  Codices ! !  What  next  I 
Cannot  my  opponent  even  weigh  the  evidence  of  his  own  wit- 
nesses? The  Latin  word  Ipsum  cannot  possibly  be  in  a  He- 
brew Codex."  What  shabby,  disgraceful  quibbling!  Orie  it 
ignorance  of  the  simplest  principle  of  ideology  ?  I  give  an 
absolutely  verbal  translation.  What  a  Lapide  says  is  that  the 
pronoun  in  the  Hebrew  is  of  the  neuter  gender,  and  to  express 


94  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

tliis  mental  concept  in  the  Latin  language,  in  which  he  was  writ- 
ing and  thinking,  too,  no  doubt,  he  uses  as  his  oral  ten/i  a  cor- 
responding Latin  pronoun  in  the  neuter  gender — Ipsum,  a 
simple  pronoun.  This  is  tlie  principle  and  process  of  ali  trans- 
lation from  a  foreign  tongue  into  our  own.  First  ascend  from 
words  to  ideas,  and  then  descend  from  ideas  to  words.  Corne- 
lius says  that  St.  Leo  uses  the  same  gender,  though  from  the 
grannnatical  exigency  of  his  language  he  \x?m&  a  relative  ^vowown 
in  the  Wiiwiev-quod :  "  Denuncians  serpenti  futurum  semen  mu- 
lieris  quod  noxii  capitis  elationem  sua  virtute  conterercc."  Aly 
opponent  exclaims — "  Well,  qiiod  is  not  Ipsum."  No,  neither  is 
it  Ipse  nor  Ipsa;  it  is  a  fourth  reading,  if  you  will — an  addi- 
tional burden  on  the  Bishop's  back.  He  adds :  "  What  Cor- 
nelius probably  meant  was  that  the  Hebrew  is  against  Ipsa" 
"  Probably  meant ! "  What  he  says  is  that  the  Hebrew  is 
Ipsxim  (which  I  will  refer  to  later  on)  and  not  Ipse  or  7/«a. 
Did  I  choose  to  act  the  dolt  I  could  "  hoist  him  with  his  own 
petard."  When  giving  his  wonderful  quotations  from  the 
Fathers  he  forgot  the  silly  objection  he  nu\de  to  a  Lapide's 
words  and  exactly  follows  his  example.  "  Irenaeus,"  he  says, 
"  in  two  passages  has  Ipse  in  both."'  Suppose  that  I  should  ask 
in  his  own  words — "cannot  my  opponent  even  weigh  the  evi- 
dence of  his  own  witnesses  ?  Irenoeus  wrote  in  Greek ;  the 
Latin  word  Ipse  cannot  be  the  one  used  by  him."  I  would 
dimply  merit  the  ridicule  your  readers  have  poured  on  him,  and 
yet  this  Oxford  Aristarchus  has  the  insolence  to  say  that,  "  no- 
toriously in  the  case  of  Cornelius  a  Lapide,  he  had  to  stand  at 
my  elbow  as  ray  tutor  1 "  Commend  me  to  a  ritualistic  "  Pope  " 
for  modesty  1  Again,  Cornelius  says  Lipomanus  adopts  Ipsum. 
The  Vicar  evidently  knows  nothing  about  his  writings.  He 
says  he  comes  "  a  little  too  late  to  give  evidence  in  his  own 
writings  of  ancient  MS.  readings."  Well,  this  is  just  the  evi- 
dence Lipomanus  does  give.  I  do  not  want  to  enlarge  on  my 
"  Resum^  "  here,  but  just  a  word.  He  was  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  bishops  at  the  Council  of  Trent,  and  made  a 
"  Catena  "  on  Genesis,  Exodus  and  the  Psalms  from  the  Latin 
and  Greek  authors.  With  characteristic  recklessness  the  Vicar 
says :  "  If  be  (Lipomanus)  does  follow  Leo  he  adopts  quod,  and 


A  Kejoindek.  95 

quod  is  not  Tpsum.''^  Alas,  no ;  but  lie  gives  Latin  versions  of 
the  Bible  with  that  terrible  Tpsuni  for  which  the  Vicar  has 
been  thirsting.  No,  quod  is  not  Ipsum!  "O,  the  pity  of  it, 
lago !     O,  lago  \  the  pity  of  it." 


LETTER   IV. 


IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe: 

Sir, — I  resume  the  examination  of  my  examiner.  He  is  very 
evidently  ashamed  of  his  exhibition  on  a.  Lapide,  and  at  once 
casts  about  for  a  soft  spot  to  break  his  fall.  It  has,  however, 
quickened  his  perception  somewhat — he  begins  to  hedge.  He 
begs  your  readers  to  bear  in  mind  that  he  is  oidy  seeing  that  I 
perform  my  task,  for  "the  result,"  he  says,  "makes  no  differ- 
ence to  the  main  (piestion  to  be  discussed  later  on."  To  keep  up 
his  courage  meanwhile  he  whistles  out  the  innocent  remark : 
"The  case  is  pretty  weak  so  far."  Whose  case?  I  ask  yr-^r 
readers:  his  or  mine? 

My  next  witness  was  Chemnitz,  a  famous  Protestant  theo- 
logian, much  respected  by  Catholic  writers  for  his  ability  and 
hojiesty.  He  criticised  the  use  of  Ipsa  in  the  Vulgate  Bible 
sanctioned  by  the  Council  of  Trent,  at  which  time  he  wrote, 
and  said  that  Jpfium  was  the  correct  reading  according  to 
ancient  writers.  This  was  said  by  him  in  the  face  of  learned 
Europe.  Bellarmine  replied  to  Chemnitz.  Of  course,  I  apolo- 
gize to  the  Vicar  for  using  the  great  Cardinal's  name.  It  is 
true  the  Encyc.  Britanniea.,  never  very  partial  to  anything 
Catholic,  says  that  his  "  life  was  a  model  of  Christian  asceti- 
cism ";  but  what  matters  that  since  a  ritualistic  Inquisitor  puts 
him  in  "the  lake  that  burneth  with  fire  and  brimstone"? 
At  all  events  he  was  one  of  the  best  Hebrew  scholars  of  his 
time.  Did  he  call  on  Chemnitz  to  produce  his  MSS.  ?  No : 
he  admitted,  in  part,  like  an  honest  man,  the  truth  his  oppo- 
nent had  asserted.     He  knew  it  as  well  as  Chemnitz.     Here  is 


06  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

liis  answer — T  translate :  "  I  reply  that  the  Vulgate  is  various 
liere;  for  some  codices  have  Ipne,  some  Fpsa^  and  besides  it  is 
not  contrary  to  the  Vulgsite  edition  should  one  be  convinced 
that  he  ougiit  to  read  Ipse  or  Jpsum.''''  He  then  jiroceeds  to 
discuss  the  authority  for  Jpm^  which  I  omit  here. 

IIow  does  the  Vicar  meet  the  tcstimonv  of  Ciiemnitz  backed 
up  by  Bellannine,  his  opi>onent  i  "  This  witness,"  he  says,  "  is 
probably  only  witnessing  against  the  corrupt  reading  of  the 
conunon  text  approved  by  the  Council  of  Trent."  ''  Probably 
only  witnessing!"  Whereas  Chemnitz  sai/s  ahsolutehj  that 
Ipsum  is  the  correct  reading,  not  Ipsa.     What  imbecility  I 

My  next  authority  was  a  learned  writer  in  the  Duhlin  Re- 
view., who  declared  that  "  the  weight  of  authority  is  in  favor 
of  the  masculine  or  neuter,  Ipse  or  Ipsum.''''  This  he  supports 
by  four  great  names  in  Biblical  and  theological  learning — two 
Jesuits  and  two  Dominicans,  who  in  their  works  exhaust  the 
whole  subject.  What  says  the  Vicar  in  reply  ?  "  Witnesses 
altogether  insufficient  and  the  above  remarks  probably  apply 
here."  "  Proliably  apply  ! "  He  loves  the  "sweet  reasonable- 
ness of  prohah'dities.  What  an  admirable  aide-de-cainp  he 
would  make  in  a  weather  bureau !  His  authority  would  be 
supreme  on — wind. 

My  next  witness  was  another  writer  in  the  Dublin  lieview, 
whom  I  believe  to  be  Cardinal  Wiseman,  one  of  the  greatest 
linguistic  scholars  of  modern  times.  Contrasting  Ipsa  with 
Ipsum  he  declares  his  belief  that  the  latter  was  "  the  true  read- 
ing." The  Vicar's  only  reply  here  is  that  I  forgot  "  the  critical 
apparatus."     Quite  satisfactory  and  characteristic. 

Again  I  cite  the  Latin  Bible  of  Tremellius  and  Junius  which 
has  Hoc  instead  of  Ipsum.  In  a  voice  slightly  move  falsetto 
than  his  wont,  the  Vicar  asks :  "  Is  Hoc  Ipsum  f  "  Well,  no ; 
it  is  only  another  reading — one  straw  more. 

The  Bishop's  little  diagram  is  being  badly  disfigured.  He 
says  he  knows  of  an  edition  of  t/ie  same  work  which  has 
Ipsum.  If  I  chose  to  claim  it  this  is  a  piece  of  evidence  for 
me,  but  as  "  I  fear  the  Greeks  even  gift-bearing  "  I  will  have 
none  of  him.  At  the  same  time  I  do  not  believe  he  knoios 
anything  of  the  kind.    Junius  and  Tremellius  issued  editions 


A  Kejoindek.  9* 

separately,  eacli  on  his  own  account.  Either  of  these  may  liavo. 
Ij)su7n,  but  I  do  not  liesitate  to  say  that  tlie  Vicar  does  not 
know  of  any  copy  of  the  jomt  edition  which  has  Ipsum.  So 
much  for  simple  truth.  What  he  means  to  l)e  the  effective 
part  of  his  answer  is,  that  "Tremellius  from  being  a  Jew  was 
converted  to  Romanism,  but  disyusted  xoith  Popery^  joined 
the  Reformers" — those  "utterly  unredeemed  villains,"  as  the 
Vicar's  "  Pope,"  Littledale,  calls  them.  And  yet  every  one 
knows,  O  Vicar,  that  these  very  "  villains "  are  "  the  rock 
whence  you  are  hewn  and  the  hole  of  the  pit  whence  you  are 
dug  out" — that  Ritualism  is  but  a  " bastard  slip  ....  of 
that  multiplied  brood."  "Who  can  make  clean  the  oflFspring 
of  that  great  iniquity  ?  Who  but  Thou  alone,  O  Gud." — Job  xi  v. 
Logical  minds  will  say  that  "  Popery,"  pure  and  simple,  the 
"poor  Irish"  and  the  "shillalah,"  with  its  sjwrtive  memories 
and  tendencies,  are  respectable  beside  such  a  gilded  abortion. 

Again :  I  referred  to  the  notes  to  the  Douay  Bible  which 
give  Ipsa  or  Ipsum.  Tiie  "stricture"  in  reply  gives  strong 
evidence  that  the  Vicar  is  frenzied.  He  says:  "Concerning 
the  Douay  Version,  which  by  its  misleading  note  has  brought 
so  much  trouble  upon  my  opponent.  It  supplies  not  a  refer- 
ence  to  any  authorities."  This  would  disgrace  anyone  less  jire- 
tentious  than  a  ritualist  "  Pope."  Have  your  readers  seen  the 
"  trouble  "  it  has  brought  upon  me  ?  I  have  not  met  it.  What 
further  "  authorities  "  were  required  for  the  fact  of  the  cur- 
rency oi  the  reading?  But  to  cheer  my  opponent's  lieart  I 
will  give  the  "authorities  "  omitted  from  the  Douay.  I  hope 
they  will  dry  liis  tears. 

In  closing  this  part  of  my  case  I  said  I  could  give  more 
evidence  in  support  of  Ipsum,  but  "  enough  is  as  good  as  a 
feast."  After  his  brilliant  "  strictures  "  he  still  has  the  cour- 
age to  say :  "  Well,  some  folks  are  easily  satisiied  ....  tlie 
whole  thing  is  really  nothing  but  a  wind-bag."  Your  readers 
are  now  aware  who  these  "folks"  are,  and  from  what  direc- 
tion the  "  wind  "  blows. 

Now  I  advanced  all  these  authorities  for  the  sole  purpose  of 
showing  how  common  the  reading  Ipswiii  was  in  all  tl-e  litera- 
ture of  this  question,  yet  my  opponent  says  "  I  fail  to  establish 


'JiJ  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

lysumP  The  truth  of  this  I  leave  to  yonr  readers,  lint  tlio 
fact  is  that  hitherto  I  have  been  \)Wi  phiyhuj  \s\i\\  the  unfortu- 
nate Vicar,  I  will  now  exhibit  him  as  ijuilty  of  the  most  in- 
iquitous j)erforrnance,  the  most  shameless,  despicable  and 
knavish  piece  of  dishonesty  to  the  public  it  has  ever  been  my 
lot  to  meet.  More  than  once  he  insinuated  that  I  was  sujv 
pressing  something,  expressed  his  anxiety  about  me  in  that 
regard,  and  prated  ab(jut  verification,  &c.  It  is  an  old  siiying 
that  when  you  see  a  nuiu  thus  su8j)iciou8  about  liis  neighbor — 
look  out  for  him.     The  Vicar  well  exemplifies  its  truth. 

Your  readers  will  rememl)er  his  ignorant  blundering 
aboiit  De  llossi,  his  own  witness,  and  the  whine  of  injured  in- 
nocence in  the  apology  he  made  for  his  "  mistake."  We  then 
learned  for  the  tirst  time  that  his  quotation  was  second-hand 
from  Dr.  Pusey,  and  that  he  "  foolishly  jumped  to  his  conclu- 
sion." He  has  done  a  good  deal  of  that  sort  oi  jxunpiiig  in  his 
"  strictures,"  but  as  your  readers  will  now  see  there  was  more 
knavery  than  J^oolinhness  in  the  jumper.  I  will  now  give  him 
the  "  comfort  "  he  says  I  promised  him  from  De  llossi.  In 
what  I  shall  have  to  say  about  Hebrew  my  authorities  will  be 
the  very  best :  Gesenius'  Hebrew  Lexicon  and  Grammar,  and 
Ewald's  Hebrew  Grammar. 

Here  let  me  clear  the  way  for  a  full  understanding  of  the 
position  by  the  ordinary  reader.  In  Hebrew  the  words  corre- 
sponding to  7/we,  lj)sa.  /p.su?n,  are  Jfu,  Hi,  Ilii,  to  speak 
popularly  since,  I  cannot  reproduce  here  the  Hebrew  charac- 
ters. It  will  be  noticed  that  in  Hebrew  the  masculine  and 
neuter  genders  are  the  same,  so  that  an  authority  for  one  is  at 
tlie  same  time  an  authority  for  the  other.'     This  fact  explains 


'  It  is  not  necessary  to  remind  learned  readers  tlmt  there  is  no 
neuter  j^ender  in  Hebrew.  Here  I  desii-od  to  hp  plain,  witliout 
a  shadow  of  obscurity  to  the  ordinary  reader.  I  have  tlierefore  used 
the  Hebrew  woi-ds — Hii,  Hi,  Hu—as  physical  signs  rather  than 
strict  {jframmatical  forms,  and  have  paralleled  them  with  Jjise,  Ipsa, 
Ipsuni,  to  which  they  are  respectively  equivalent,  for  the  puiiwses  of 
my  tirg'uinent  to  the  non-classical  reader.  See  the  last  Letter  of  this 
Rejoinder,  and  my  comments,  on  this  topic,  in  the  Rebutter  to  the 
"Third  Letter." 


A  Hkjoindkk.  99 

and  proves  tlie  truth  of  ti  Lapiile's  statement,  ai.d  of  the  many 
commentators  who  a<ifree  with  him,  that  the  Hebrew  ('ooicos 
have  Iptiu/n,  and  also  exphiiiis  the  many  other  commentators 
wlio  sji}'  that  tlie  Hebrew  has  /j)se.  lln — maseuhne  and 
neuter — supports  them  both.  Let  your  readers  bear  tliis  in 
mind  in  order  fully  to  grasp  the  Vicar's  fraud.  See,  too,  ti 
Lajiide's  comment  in  fith  parag.  of  the  Vicar's  .'kl  stricture, 

Xow  for  De  Kossi.  In  \\\»jirst  paragraph,  quoted  by  Pusey, 
he  discusses  " /// — //wa  "  and  says  "  it  is  not  y^/^  sitjicientlij 
certain  .  ,  ,  ,  it  is  rather  to  Ix;  accounted  among  the  errors  in 
thai  (the  Vulgate)  version  ;  and  the  most  learned  expositors 
and  critics  aniotuj  Catholics  so  in  fact  account  it,"  So  we  did 
not  have  to  wait  for  an  Anglican  Bishop  and  a  "  sacerdotal 
pretender"  to  instruct  us  on  the  "  tremendous  importance ''  of 
Ijysa.  How  much  of  the  Bible  would  they  have  anyway  but 
for  the  Catholic  Church  ?  Pshaw !  Notwithstanding  the 
doctrinal  chaos  that  exists  in  their  own  church,  and  tlie  chasms 
that  separate  themselves,  they  are  simply  theological  Robin 
Hoods  as  regards  her. 

De  Rossi's  second  paragraph  is  the  imj>ortant  one  just  now. 
He  begins  it:  "  But  for  the  masculine//?*  there  stand — 1)  the 
consent  of  almost  all  Hebrew  MSS,,  &c."  I  give  this  with 
absolute  verbal  correctness,  simply  translating  the  Hebrew 
characters  into  English — Ha.  He  follows  this  up  by  citations 
of  Texts,  Versions,  MSS,  editions  and  readings  from  Fathers 
and  writers  Greek,  Latin  and  Syriac,  but  he  g;ives  the  worth' 
of  none.  He  then  immediately  concludes:  "Which  original 
authorities  and  witnesses,  being  most  exceedingly  grave  and 
insurmountable,  evidently  demonstrate  that  the  tnie  reading  of 
the  sacred  text  is  //w — fj>sc,  Ipsum  ;  and  conntless  Catholic 
authors  both  hefore  and  since  the  Council  of  Trent  follow  this 
reading  as  the  truc>'  ki\(\'j)r<:f('r''t  to  lllic'femlnine,"  (The 
italics  are  mine,)  Theicnpcir  T*u.'tey  adds;  "Tie'(De  Rossi) 
enumerates  thirty-riVe-iiud  si't*-'  that-  M^e  i.iorJe  of  moet  of  them 
and  the  places  whvJie 'thaj'  Occur  are  giv^-sn 'by  (^oster  and 
Natalis  Alexander."  It  is  clear,  then,  that  when  De  Rossi  in 
the  opening  of  his  paragraph  said  that  "  for  the  masculine  IIu 
there  stand,  &c,,"  he  meant  for  the  masculine  or  neuter  ^^  ITu 


100  IrsE,  Ipsa,  Ipsi'm. 

—  J^m4\  Ii»8CM,"  "there  stand,  &c.,"  tliou<jh  he  does  not  j)oint 
out  which  of  his  cited  authorities  are  for  the  one,  wliich  for 
the  other.  Happily  I  can  supplement  and  explain  De  Rossi 
here,  for  I  have  on  my  table  Natalia  Alexander,  from  which 
De  Rossi  quoted  and  to  which  he  refers  his  rejiders.  '*"niem- 
ber  my  penant'e  was  "  to  estohlish  IjMum.'''' 

Now  turn  we  to  the  Vicar's  letter  of  Dec.  15th.  For  distor- 
tion, suggestion  of  falsehood,  and  6U])pressi(jn  of  truth  "  none 
but  itself  can  be  its  parallel,"  as  Martimis  Scriblerus  would  say. 
The  Vicar  writes:  "lie  (De  Kossi)  enumerates  thirty-live 
'  most  exceedingly  grave  and  insurmountable  original  authori- 
ties and  witnesses'  in  support  of  the  masculine  '//i? shall  bruise 
the  serpent's  head.' ''  Is  not  this  something  monstrous  ^  Of 
course  De  Rossi  does  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  Vicar  sup- 
presses Ipstufi  in  liis  quotation  from  De  Rossi  and  interjjolates 
the  words,  "//e  shall  bruise  the  serpent's  liead."  Ilis  cooking 
and  garhHiuj  of  Pusey's  quotation  from  De  Rossi  is  so  out- 
rageously dishonest  that  I  des])air  of  making  it  plain.  I  do 
not  wonder  he  feared  "  the  limited  area  of  the  Institute  "  where 
the  books  could  be  passed  around.  As  I  have  already  said  De 
Rossi's  si'cond  paragraph,  as  given  by  Pusey,  is  divided  into 
twelve  heads.  Under  the  first  nine  heads  De  Rossi  gives  the 
names  of  texts,  versions,  MSS.  and  editions ;  under  the  tenth 
and  eleventh  heads  he  gives  the  names,  with  a  reference  to  the 
works  only,  of  eleven  writers ;  and  the  twelfth  head  is  a  state- 
ment of  liis  own  opinion.  He  inunediately  concludes  "  that 
the  true  reading  of  the  sacred  text  is  JIu,  Ipse^  Ipsijm."  These 
are  his  very  words.  And  he  adds  that  ''^countless  CatJwlic 
authors  prefer  this  reading  to  the  feminine."  These  words 
close  this  part  of  the  quotation  from  De  Rossi  in  Pusey's  book. 
Pusey  then  adds  that  De  Rossi  enumerates  thirty -five  of  these 
Catliolic  authtJTS  who  )Mefer  llu,-  Tj'^\'-lifsi^^U  but  Pusey  gives 
none  of  them.  In'  -thd  fa'?e  of  {liis  \\hai  "stupor  of  soul,  what 
paralysis  of  conscience  swept  over  Ih*;  VicaV  which  led  him  to 
say  :  "  He  (De  Rossi)  ei?uni  era  tee  thirty -five  'most  exceedingly 
grave  and  insurmountable  original  authorities  and  witnesses' 
in  support  of  the  masculine  ^Ile  shall  bruise  the  serpent's 
head,' "  when  he  knows  De  Rossi  says  that  the  "  witnesses  and 


A  Hejoinder.  101 

anthoritiefi"  cited  uiuler  tlie  eleven  heads  support  the  mascu- 
line or  iifute)' — "'Jill,  Ipiic,  Ii'siM,"  and  the  thirty-tive  Catho- 
lie  autht)rH  are  afterwards  enumerated  in  addition  according  to 
Pusey.  The  Vicar  wrote  this  in  Deceud)er  last  *'  for  the  hene- 
fit  (»f  IJihlical  student^"  and  yet  in  his  second  letter,  n(»w  under 
examination,  he  says  in  the  lOth  paragraph  :  "  In  all  the  com- 
mentaries I  have  read  on  Gen.  iii.  15,  I  have  never  found 
IpxHiii  mentioned  as  a  various  reading,  and  that  therefore  I 
tlouht  if  one  exists."  Good  Heaven!  He  copies  from  De 
Rossi  rujht  up  to  the  very  word  Jpnum,  wilfully  and  wickedly 
suppresses  it,  avows  he  never  heard  of  it,  and  then  with  hypo- 
critical tears  in  his  eyes  complains  that  I  "brand  him  with  dis- 
honesty and  knavery  to  the  public  !  "  Some  lovers  of  retribu- 
tive justice  among  your  readers,  thinking  of  the  sad  fate  of 
Bellarmine  and  JJaronius,  may  ask — who  "  have  their  part  in 
the  lake  that  burnetii  with  fire  and  brimstone?"  The  Vicar 
liimself  is  fully  entitled  to  any  "comfort"  which  reflection  on 
this  (juestion  suggests. 

I  might  here  leave  him  to  his  sobering  thoughts  and  pass  on, 
but  it  might  appear  cruel.  I  now  believe  that  he  is  so  under 
the  dominion  of  some  physiological  and  psychological  fatality 
in  regard  to  religious  truth  and  the  Catholic  Church,  that  he  is 
not  free  to  use  his  reason  in  the  ordinary  way.  Charity  plaiidy 
bids  me  pause  in  i)re8ence  of  his  misfortune.  JJut  as  lie  loves 
to  "give  information''  I  think  I  discharge  the  obligations  of 
ch.arity  by  enabling  him  "  to  stock  up,"  though  it  now  seeme 
like  calling  in  an  army  to  arrest  a  house-breaker  to  offer  further 
evidence  of  Ips^iin.     His  mental  condition  can  alone  justify  it. 

From  Natalis  Alexiinder  and  other  works  in  my  hand,  I 
think  I  can  double  De  Rossi's  "  thirty-five,"  but  I  will  give 
but  a  few.  The  Hebrew  text  according  to  Alexander  is : 
Jpsum  conteret  tihi  caput,  though  as  I  exjilained  above  some 
read  Ipse,  ITii  being  Hebrew  for  both.  Unfortunately  we 
have  now  but  fragments  of  the  splendid  Hexaj^la  (six-fold) 
Bible  of  Origen.  The  standard  edition  of  these  fragments  is 
that  of  Montfaucon  in  two  volumes.  In  volume  one,  p.  18,  I 
find  the  Hebrew  rendered  :  Ipsum  conteret  tihi  caput.  The 
Syriac  Version  has  :  Ipsum  concidahit  caput  tuum,  and  the 


102  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Iphim. 

two  celebrated  Syriac  writers,  St,  f]j)liracin  and  Moses  T3ar- 
Ceplia,  mentioned  hy  De  Uosni,  use  Ijixnin  in  tlieir  writini^s 
(jiioted  hy  De  Rossi;  the  Samaritan  Pkntatkicu  lias :  lj»<niit 
contei'i't  tibi  cajxit ;  the  Latin  liihie  of  the  celebrated  Sanctes 
Pa^ninus  has  IpHUiit  ;  the  Koyal  IVdyjflot  r>li)le  of  Arias 
!^^ontanuH  has  Ijpmkih;  Yatable's  Bible  has  limrnii;  the 
famous  I»ible  of  Isidore  Clarius  has  JpHtnn  ;  the  Lyons  IJible 
])rinte(l  in  ir)50  lias  T/w?  in  the  text,  but  Ipsiuii  in  the  marj^in  ; 
the  Hible  of  Ik'Hajo,  Hishop  of  Paris,  has  the  same;  Lipoiiia- 
mis  in  his  "Catena"  gives  a  list  of  Latin  copies  which  have 
Ipmtm.^  ....  Perhaps  I  ought  to  stop  here.  I  wonder  if  I  have 
t'ldfilli'd  i»ij  junaiicc !  Put  I  must  mention  Kather  Perrone's 
"Dogmatic  Thesis  on  the  Inmiaculate  Concei)tion,"  and  lastly 
Cardinal  I^itrizi's  "  gem  "  of  a  book  entitled  :  "  De  I  In,  hoc  est, 
de  Lnmaculata  ^fariae  origine  a  Deo  praedicta  Uomae,  1S53." 
It  examines  critically  all  the  Texts,  Editions,  Versions  anil  MSS. 
which  have  either  Jpnc,  Ipmi  or  Ipniuii.  It  was  written  the 
year  before  the  definition  of  the  Inunaculate  C(mce])tion,  and 
the  Cardinal  ado|)ts  Ipne  or  IpHum  as  the  true  reading. 

So  much  in  confutation,  and  for  the  instruction,  of  the  Ox- 
ford twain.  I  feel  but  too  keenly  the  humiliation  of  annihi- 
lating such  antag(»nists,  but  I  am  saddened  by  the  reflection 
that  Oxford  University,  founded  and  reared  under  the  auspices 
of  the  Catholic  church,  should  in  these  days  be  responsible  for 
swell  exponents  of  Biblical  scholarship. 

I  have  now  provetl  beyond  cavil  the  various  reading  for 
which  I  contended — JpHc\  Ipsa,  fpsum  against  the  Bishop's 
diagram  Ipse-Ip^a^  and  the  Vicar's  puny  attempt  to  bolster  it 
up.  I  have  not  noticed  other  readings  in  Gen.  iii.  15,  such  as 
///<%  //rtf'f,  ///6',  for  which  I  can  give  authorities.  In  my  next 
I  will  consider  the  effect  of  this  proof. 

POSTSCRIPT. 

There  are  four  famous  Polyglot  Bibles — the  Complutensian, 
the  Antwerp,  the  Parisian,  and  the  London.  I  will  here  give 
my  readers  the  results  of  my  examination  of  them  on  our  text. 

'  I  have  omitted  here  some  Protestant  te.xt  writers  because  I  could 
not  consult  the  originals. 


A  Kkjoixdek.  108 

The  CoMri.rTKXsiAN  i^ivcs  the  llt'ltrew  with  a  Latin  transla- 
tion, Ipxn,  wliirh  is  alleged  to  he  that  of  St.  fleronie;  the 
C'iialdaic  I'araj)lira«e  with  a  Latin  translation,  Ij^me ;  the  Se[>- 
tua;;int  (Jreek  with  a  Latin  translation,  /yw. 

The  Antwkki'  gives  the  Hehrew  with  a  Latin  tratislation, 
Ipnn  :  the  (ireek  with  a  Latin  translation,  /jjne ,'  the  Chaldaic 
Para[)hrase  with  a  Latin  translation,  /jt-st'. 

The  Takisian  gives  the  Hebrew  with  a  Latin  translation. 
Ipsa;  the  Greek  with  a  Latin  translation,  Tjhst' i  the  Chaldiiic 
Paraphrase  with  a  Latin  translation.  Ipse  j  the  8vriac  with  a 
Latin  translation,  Ipsuii)  ;  the  Arahie  with  a  Latin  translation, 
Hatc ;  the  Samaritan  with  a  Latin  translation,  Ipstuit. 

The  London  is  snperior  to  all  the  others.  It  was  edited  by 
tlie  Rev.  Dr.  Jiryan  Walton,  afterwards  Anglican  Bishop  of 
Chester,  and  printed  in  l(i53-l<!57,  in  six  large  folio  volumes. 
It  gives  the  Hebrew  with  an  interlinear  Latin  translation, 
Ipsuni  I  the  Vulgate,  Ijysa ;  the  Greek  with  a  Latin  transla- 
tion of  Flaniinins  Nobilius,  /j>fie ;  the  Syriac  with  a  Latin 
translation,  Ipftinn ;  the  Targum  of  Onkelos  with  a  Latin 
translation,  Ipse  j  the  Samaritan  Pentateuch  with  a  Latin 
translation,  Ijysvm  j  the  Samaritan  Version  with  a  Latin  trans- 
lation, Ipsum  ;  the  Arabic  with  a  Latin  translation,  Ifacr. 

These  magnificent  works  I  cimsulted  in  the  Lennox  Library, 
!New  York,  and  in  Gore  Hall,  Harvard  University.  Walton's 
Polyglot  is  also  in  the  Parliamentary  Library  at  Ottawa. 

I  have  also  examined  the  following  minor  Polyglots:  Ber- 
tram's (1586),  Welder's  (1590),  Ilutter's  (1599),  and  IBagster's 
(London). 

Bektkam  (with  notes  by  Vatable)  has  the  Hebrew,  Greek, 
and  two  Latin  translations.  Ipse,  fystan. 

WoLDER  has  tho  Greek,  the  Latin — Ipse,  Ip-nnn,  and 
Luther's  German. 

HcTTER  has  the  Hebrew,  Chaldaic,  Greek,  Latin — Ipsa, 
German,  Italian, 

Baoster  lias  the  Hebrew,  Greek,  Vulgate — Ipsa,  German, 
Spanish,  Italian,  English, 

I  have  also  examined  the  following  celebrated  Bibles : 

The  Zurich  (1543),  which  has  Ipstim/  the  joint  edition  of 


104  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Vatable  and  Pagnini,  which  has  Ipsuin ;  the  heautiful  edi- 
tion of  Father  Houbioant,  the  Fnjnch  Oratorian,  which  has 
the  Hebrew  with  a  Latin  translation — Illud  ;  and  the  Hebrew 
Bible  of  Arias  Montanus  (1584)  with  Latin  interlinear  trans- 
lation— Ipsum,  to  which  I  have  already  referred  in  the  above 
Letter ;  the  "  Biblia  lUustrata  "  of  Galovius  (1719),  which  has 
Ipse,  Ijps'unn. 

I  have,  too,  examined  the  works  of  the  following  learned 
Biblical  Commentators : 

Sebastian  Munster,  who  gives  Illud  ;  Paul  Fagius,  who 
discusses  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum,  and  prefers  Ipse,  Ipsum  /  Dru- 
8IUS,  who  says  that  nearly  all  the  Latin  MSS.  have  Ipsa,  while 
somo  have  Ipse  and  others  Ipsum;  Lucas  Brugensis  the 
famous  Catholic  Biblical  critic  of  Louvain  University,  who 
has  a  splendid  note  on  the  whole  matter.  lie  expresses  liis 
preference  for  Ipsum  in  these  words :  "  Fortassis  autem  com- 
modius  neutro  genere  transferatur,  Ipsum  conteret  caput 
tuum."  But  as  he  knew  much  more  about  Catholic  doctrine 
than  either  Bishop  Kingdon  or  his  Vicar,  he  does  not  hesitate 
to  say  that  it  makes  no  doctrinal  difference  which  of  the  three 
readings  is  adopted.     Speaking  of  Ipsa  he  says :  "  Ncque  vero 

haec  lectio  Hebraeo  repugnat Potest  (autem)  haec  lectio 

.  .  .  .  de  Christi  matre  intelligi,  ut  serpentis  capiit  cont?'lvlsse 
dieatur  qui  Eum  genuit  qui  contrivit,  qui  diabolum  Sua  morte 
divicit,  et  nos  ex  ejus  tyrannide-in  libertatem  asseruit." 

I  also  refer  my  readers  to  the  critical  edition  of  the  Latin 
Old  Testament  by  the  learned  Tischendorf  and  Heyse.  These 
scholars  give  the  three  readings — Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum,  in  their 
note  on  Genesis  iii.  15.  See  "Postscript"  to  the  twenty- 
eighth  Letter  of  this  Rejoinder,  where  I  again  quote  from 
Walton's  Polyglot  and  Tischendorf,  on  Ipsa. 

Vercei.lone,  too,  in  his  peerless  work — The  Yarious  Head- 
ings of  the  Latin  Vulgate  Bible,  Yol.  I.,  p.  13 — gives  the  edi- 
tions (with  their  dates)  of  Bibles  with  Ipsum,  and  then  adds : 
"  Ignoramus  utrum  haec  lectio  (Ipsum)  ex  codicum  fide,  quod 
affirmare  videtur  Lippomanas,  derivata  sit — I  do  not  know 
whether  this  reading  {Ipsum)  rests  upon  ^he  authority  of  MSS., 
but  Lippomauus  seems  to  say  that  it  doofj." 


A  Rejoindkr.  106 

To  my  mind  Lippomaims  absohitely  affirms  it  in  these 
words :  '■'■Ipse  conteret  caput  tuuin ;  vel  juxta  alia  excmpla- 
ria,  Tpsttm  conteret  caput  tuum,  scilicet  semen  nmlieris."  See 
Lippomanus'  Catena  on  Genesis  and  Exodus. 

Let  me  add  to  these  authorities  that  of  Calvin.  In  his 
"Commentary  on  Genesis,"  now  before  me,  the  text  com- 
» mented  by  him  reads:  Ipsum  vulnerabit  te  in  capite,  et  tu 
vulnerabis  ipsum  in  calcaneo." 

This  may  suffice  to  establish  the  point  that  the  Latin  reading 
of  Genesis  iii.  15,  is  not  Ijyse,  Ipsa,  simply,  but  Ipse,  Ipsa, 
Ipsum. 


LETTER  Y. 

IPSE,   IPSA,   IPSUM — A  REJOINDER. 

To  tlie  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

■Sir. — In  connection  with  the  proof  of  Ipsum  in  my  last 
1'  'I  have  to  add  a  word  anent  a.  Lapide.     In  the  sixth 

ph  of  his  third  letter  the  Vicar  says :  "  Since  suggest- 
ing an  explanation  of  Cornelius  a  Lapide's  statement  that 
Ipsum  was  found  in  the  Hebrew  Codices,  I  have  accidentally 
met  with  a  corroboration  of  its  accuracy  from  Cornelius  liim- 
self.  Wordsworth  quotes  his  comnient  on  Rom.  xvi.  20,  v)hick 
I  trust  my  opponent  will  mark  in  his  copy  with  a  reference 
to  Gen.  iii.  15:  'Alludit  apostolus  ad  Gen.  iii.  15,  ut  directe 
habent  Hebraica  Hu  Hic,  id  est  Ipsum  Semen  sive  proles 
mulieris,  puta  Christus,  conteret  caput  tuum.'  Cornelius  iis- 
serts  that  the  Hebrew  is  masculine  Ilic,  and  that  tliis  mascu- 
line means  Ipsum  Saneti,  or  Christ.  This  is  almost  identical 
with  my  explanation."  AVill  your  readers  believe  it?  Here 
is  another  mutilation  by  suppression  and  interpolation.  The 
Vicar  cannot  be  safely  tnisted  for  anything.  He  appears  to  be 
utterly  "  gangrened  "  with  dishonesty  or  incapacity,  or  l)oth. 
He  refers  to  Bishop  Christopher  "Wordsworth,  a  contemptible 
"  no-popery  "  ranter.     Why  did  he  not  take  the  trouble  *'  to 


106  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipbcm. 

verify"  liim  before  asking  me,  with  his  usual  insolence,  to 
"  mark  my  copy  "  ? 

Evidently  he  does  not  know  the  late  Bishop  Christopher  as 
w^ell  as  1  do  or  he  would  not  so  "  foolishly  jump  "  again.  Now 
here  is  that  part  of  a  Lapide's  comment  on  Romans  xvi.  20, 
verbatim:  "Alludit(St.  Paul)  ad  Gen.  iii.  15 — 7/?,9a  (vel,  ut 
directe  habent  Ilebraea  Ilu,  id  est  Ipsum,  semen,  sive  proles 
mulieris,  puta  Christus)  mnteret  caput  tuumP  Compare  this 
with  the  Vicar's  quotation  and  you  find  that  Wordsworth  or 
the  Vicar  suppresses  ^'■Ipsa^'  and  interpolates  ^^Jlic"  after 
'^IIu"  so  that  it  is  simply  worse  than  a  "  pious  fraud  "  to  say 
that  "a  Lapide  asserts  that  the  Hebrew  is  masculine  IIigP 
"Wordsworth  died  about  three  years  ago — I  hope  he  has  escaped 
the  hard  fate  of  Bellarmine  and  Baroiiius.  There  is  always  a 
locus  penitentif^  for  the  living  which  the  Vicar  may  turn  to 
account.* 

Having,  in  my  "  Resumd,"  given  what  I  considered  suffi- 
cient evidence  to  support  the  various  readings — Ipse,  Ijjsa, 
Ipsum — I  said  "  that,  according  to  Catholic  teaching  and  au- 
thority, there  is  absolutely  no  difference  in  meaning  between 

the  three  readings When  properly  understood  the  sense 

is  the  same  to  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike."  In  proof  I  cited 
great  Catholic  writers  living  and  dead,  and  I  can  expand  the 
list  indefinitely,  but  I  desire  to  compress.  In  the  face  of  these 
authorities  my  opponent  calls  my  statement  a  "ludicrous  fal- 
lacy"; but  how  does  he  meet  me?  By  the  most  flagrant 
calumny  and  vituperation  !  I  cannot  point  to  a  single  instance 
of  fair,  manly  investigation  in  the  course  of  his  "  Strictures." 
They  are  made  up,  to  a  great  extent,  of  the  ingredients  of  the 
Witches'  Cauldron : 

Eye  of  newt,  and  toe  of  frog, 
Wool  of  bat,  and  tongue  of  dog. 
Adder's  fork,  and  blind- worm's  sting, 
LizanVs  leg,  and  owlet's  wing, 
For  a  charm  of  powerful  trouble, 
Like  a  hell-broth,  boil  and  bubble. 

'  See  Postscript  to  this  Letter  for  a  fuller  exposi  of  Wordsworth's 
disgraceful  ignorance  and  calumnies. 


A  Rejoinder.  107 

In  tlie  15th  paragraph  of  his  third  letter  he  says :  "  It  may 
coniidently  be  said  that  there  cannot  be  found  in  the  whole 
history  of  literature  an  instance  of  a  misreading  which  has  led 
to  such  grave  and  ....  awful  consequences  as  this  apparently 
slight  change  of  an  e  to  an  a  in  the  sacred  text."  The  "  awful 
consequences"  he  has  told  us  is  the  "undue  exaltatitm  of  the 
Holy  Virgin."  This  has  provoked  many  a  smile  among  your 
readers,  especially  since  the  bad  "snowing  under"  of  tlie 
Bishop's  diagram  in  my  last  letter.  Lest  the  Vicar,  however, 
with  unwonted  discourtesy,  in  a  moment  of  gasping  despera- 
tion, should  say  that  "a  man  may  smile  and  smile"  and  yet — 
have  his  part  in  the  burning  lake,  I  will  change  the  venue 
from  the  Western  (the  Latin)  church,  where  Ipsa  has  done  so 
much  mischief,  and  been  of  such  "  tremendous  importance  " 
to  the  "  poor  Irish  "  and  "  Romanists  "  generally,  to  the  Orien- 
tal (the  Greek)  church.  This  church,  let  me  say  broadly,  uses 
the  Greek  masculine — '■''Autos — Ile^''  in  Gen.  iii.  15,  or  having 
in  mind  the  Syriac  writers, — '''Auto — /;!,"  to  conform  with  the 
Greek  what  I  have  already  said  about  St.  Ephra^m  and  Moses 
Bar-Cepha  using  the  neuter  Ipsum  as  stated  by  De  Rossi.  This 
church  does  not  use  Ipsa  nor  Ante,  and  yet  it  fully  realizes  the 
sublime,  ecstatic  and  inspired  projihecy  of  the  Blessed  Mary  as 
expressed  in  t\\Q  Magnificat :  "For  behold,  from  henceforth 
all  generations  shall  call  me  blessed.  For  He  that  is  mlglity 
hath  done  great  ♦liings  to  me  and  holy  is  His  name." 

Willingly,  for  a  while,  do  I  leave  tli'^  rough  tield  of  conti-o- 
versy  for  the  more  genial  region  of  contemplation,  and  I  ask 
your  readers  to  go  with  me.  And  would  that  my  lips  might 
be  touched  with  "coals  from  the  Altar"  as  I  utter  the  words  I 
write.  For,  if  there  be  one  persoti  in  the  New  Creation  of 
Grace  who  seems  to  hush  to  silence  the  discord  of  tongues,  by 
the  unbroken  tranquillity  of  her  sweet,  patient  love,  it  is  the 
Madonna.  Her  life  on  earth  was  to  nurse  and  foster  Christ ; 
and  her  glory  in  Heaven  is  to  be  enthroned  by  His  side.  What 
she  was  on  earth,  that  she  is  still  in  the  Church  of  God.  She 
is  the  Mother  of  Jesus  All  her  vast  power, — all  her  divinely- 
appointed  innuence, — i.io  whole  omnipotence  of  her  interces- 
sion, as  God  has  willed  it  in  the  sweet  coungels  of  His  love, — 


108  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

her  solitary  grandeur  in  tlie  church,  as  the  one  golden  link 
which  unites  earth  with  Heaven, — the  dazzling  brightness  of 
lier  high  throne  of  Empire — all  are  hers  that  she  may  nurse 
and  foster  Jesus  in  the  hearts  of  men,  as  in  the  special  cradle 
of  His  own  election.  His  is  the  only  name  under  heaven  given 
to  men  whereby  they  must  be  saved.  All  that  Mary  has  and 
is,  she  has  and  is  by  and  through  her  Son  and  for  His  sake. 
Cruel  indeed  are  they,  thankless  and  heartless,  who  would  try 
to  make  a  breach  betv;een  the  tender  mother  and  her  Child. 
By  so  much  the  more  cruel  are  they  than  Herod  and  his  sate- 
lites,  by  how  much  the  love  of  Mary  for  her  Son  was  and  is 
more  intense,  more  pure,  more  sacred,  more  spiritual,  than 
that  of  the  forlorn  mothers  of  Judah  for  their  bleeding  little 
ones.  And  who  of  men  or  angels  can  measure  the  distance 
which  separates  these  two  loves  ? 

Turn  we  then,  from  the  Babel  of  confusion  which  the  cold 
and  sceptical  Protestantism  of  my  opponents  has  willed  to 
thrust  into  the  midst  of  the  tenderest  love  of  heaven,  to  satisfy 
the  eyes  of  the  soul  and  the  aflfections  of  the  human  heart  with 
the  vision  of  Mary's  growth  in  the  Church  of  God.  This  is  my 
present  purpose.  I  wish  to  set  before  your  readers  the  picture 
of  Mary  as  the  Greek  Fathers  alone  have  painted  her  from  the 
very  dawn  of  Christianity.  In  the  earliest  ages  of  the  Primi- 
tive Church  she  occupies  a  position  of  unequalled  dignity  in 
the  writings  of  the  Fathers,  Greek  and  Latin,  and  wins  for 
herself  sentiments  of  the  tenderest  devotion  and  titles  of 
highest  pre-eminence.  I  confine  myself  now  for  reasons 
already  given,  to  the  Greek  Fathers. 

I  ask  your  readers,  then,  to  accompany  me  while  we  search 
in  the  records  of  the  first  six  centuries  for  the  place  which 
Mary  held  in  the  devotion  and  doctrine — in  the  heart  and 
mind — of  the  early  church.  This  is  the  period  of  the  undi- 
vided church  by  which  Anglicans  and  Ritualists  at  all  events 
profess  to  be  bound.  I  do  not  intend  to  rely  upon  one  or  two 
stray  passages,  obscure  and  incidental.  I  leave  these  to  the  self- 
willed  enemies  of  Mary's  empn-e — "to  preachers  who  are  com- 
pelled to  hedge  their  expressions  with  so  many  cautions  about 
false  doctrine  and  practice  in  regard  to  her,  that  many  a  one 


A  Rejoinder.  109 

shrinks  from  a  theme  which,  under  other  circumstances,  he 
would  rejoice  to  handle!"  God  help  the  poor  weaklings! 
Nor  could  I  hope  to  offer  to  your  readers  a  true  idea  of  anti- 
quity by  such  a  process.  What  they  want  is  a  chain  of 
Fathers  living  in  different  parts  of  the  world  and  in  succeed- 
ing centuries,  the  uniformity  of  whose  unconscious  utterances 
may  give  them  a  real  Apostolical  tradition.  The  sublime  por- 
trait, therefore,  which  I  propose  to  exhibit,  is  uot  the  work  of 
one  hand.  It  is  the  ilective  labor  of  centuries.  I  have  for 
the  most  part,  the  Grreek  and  the  Latin  of  the  Greek  before 
me. 

In  the  first  century  we  cannot,  of  course,  expect  much  assist- 
ance. It  was  an  age  of  martyrs  and  evangelists,  not  of  writers, 
unless  we  except  the  composers  of  the  New  Testament.  Yet 
there  exists  a  document,  which  is,  by  many  learned  critics, 
assigned  to  the  Apostolic  age.  It  consists  of  a  letter  written 
by  the  priests  and  deacons  of  Achaia,  in  which  they  narrate  the 
acts  of  the  martyrdom  of  St.  Andrew  the  Apostle.  Even  those 
who  deny  its  authenticity  (as  the  Protestant  Cave)  are  com- 
pelled, by  the  evidence  of  facts,  to  assign  it  a  place  among  the 
earliest  records  of  the  Church.  Gallandus,  Piazza  and  Natalis 
Alexander  leave  no  doubts  about  it.  In  this  letter  St.  Andrew, 
speaking  of  our  Lord,  says  that  "  He  was  born  of  a  hlameUss 
Virgin." 

There  is,  besides,  another  document,  which  is  considered  by 
some  to  be  the  work  of  an  Apostle,  though  the  preponderance 
of  authority  is  apparently  in  favor  of  the  contrary  opinion.  I 
may  as  well,  however,  introduce  it  here.  It  is,  at  all  events,  a 
most  important  witness  to  the  Apostolic  tradition  of  which  we 
are  in  search,  not  only  because  it  is  the  oldest  and  most  famous 
of  Oriental  Liturgies,  but  also  because  the  forms  of  expression, 
which  I  am  about  to  quote,  "occur  in  all  the  Liturgies  of  the 
East.  In  the  Liturgy,  then,  which  is  called  after  tlie  name  of 
St.  James  the  Apostle,  I  find  the  following  words  in  four 
several  parts  of  the  Mass ;  *'  The  most  holy,  immaculate,  most 
glorious  mother  of  God,  our  lady  and  every-Virgin  Mary." 
And,  again,  "  All-blameless,  and  mother  of  our  God,  more  to 
be  lionored  than  the  cherubim,  and  more  glorious  beyond  com- 


110  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

parison  than  tlje  seraphini."  And,  once  more,  she  is  thus  in- 
voked :  "O  Sanctified  Temple!"  My  authorities  here  are  tlie 
ilhistrious  Asseniani,  a  Syrian  Marouite  family  of  four  famous 
Orientalists. 

My  Greek  witnesses  for  the  second  century  are  St.  Justin 
Martyr  (A.D.  12U-165)  and  Irenjeus  (120-200).  St.  Justin 
J  represents  Palestine,  and  St.  Irenseus  Asia  Minor  and  Gaul — 
or  rather  he  represents  St.  John  the  Evangelist,  for  he  had 
been  taught  hy  the  Martyr  St.  Polycarp,  who  was  the  intimate 
associate  of  St.  John,  as  also  of  other  Apostles.'  St.  Justin 
says ;  "  We  know  that  He,  before  all  creatures,  proceeded  from 
the  Father  by  Ilis  power  and  will,  ....  and  by  means  of  the 
Virgin  became  man,  that  by  what  way  the  disobedience  arising 
from  the  serpent  had  its  beginning,  by  that  way  also  it  might 
have  had  an  undoing.  For  Eve,  being  a  virgin  and  undefiled, 
conceiving  the  word  that  was  from  the  serpent,  brought  foi-th 
disobedience  and  death;  but  the  Virgin  Mary,  taking  faith  and 
joy,  when  the  angel  told  her  the  good  tidings,  that  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  should  come  upon  her  and  the  power  of  the  Highest 
overshadow  her.  and  therefore  the  Holy  one  that  was  born  of 
her  was  Son  of  God,  answered,  '  Be  it  to  me  according  to  Thy 
word.'"  Dialog.  Try  ph.  1^*^.  St.  Ireufeus  writes :  "With  a 
fitness,  Mary  the  Virgin  is  found  obedient,  saying, '  Behold  Thy 
handmaid,  O  Lord:  be  it  to  me  according  to  Thy  word.' 
But  Eve  was  disobedient ;  for  she  obeyed  not,  while  she  was 
yet  a  virgin.  As  she,  having  indeed  Adam  for  a  husband,  but 
as  yet  being  a  virgin  ....  becoming  disobedient,  became 
the  cause  of  death  both  to  herself  and  to  the  whole  human 
race,  so  also  ALiry,  having  the  predestined  man,  and  being  yet 
a  virgin,  being  obedient,  became  both  to  herself  and  to  the 
whole  human  race  the  cause  of  salvation  ....  and  on  ac- 
count of  this  the  Lord  said  that  tire  first  should  be  last  and  the 

last  first And  so  the  knot  of  Eve's  disobedience  received 

its  unloosing  through  the  obedience  of  Mary,  for  what  Eve,  a 
virgin,  bound  by  incredulity,  that  Mary,  a  virgin,  unloosed  by 
faith."    Adv.  liar.  3,  22,  34. 

'  See  Newman's  Letter  to  Pusey. 


A  Rejoindkk.  Ill 

And  again  :  "  As  Eve  by  the  speech  of  an  angel  was  seduced, 
so  as  to  flee  God,  f'-ansgressing  His  word,  so  also  ^lary  received 
the  good  tidings  by  means  of  the  angel's  speech,  so  as  to  bear 
God  within  her,  being  obedient  to  His  word.  And,  though 
the  one  had  disobeyed  God,  yet  the  other  was  drawn  to  obey 
God;  that  of  the  Viryin  Eve  the  Viiujln  Mary  mhjht  he- 
come  the  advocate.  And,  as  by  a  virgin  the  human  race  had 
been  bound  to  death,  by  a  virgin  it  is  saved  (or  loosed),  the 
balance  being  preserved,  a  virgin's  disobedience  by  a  virgin's 
obedience." — Ihkl.  v.  19.  Cardinal  Xewman,  commenting  on 
these  two  writers  (with  Tertullian),  says :  "  They  unanimously 
declare  that  she  (Mary)  was  not  a  mere  instrument  in  the  In- 
carnation, such  as  David  or  Judah  may  be  considered  ;  they 
declare  she  co-operated  in  our  salvation  not  merely  by  the 
descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost  upon  her  body,  but  by  specific  holy 
acts,  the  effect  of  the  Holy  Ghost  within  her  soul  ....  that 
as  Eve  made  room  for  Adam's  fall,  so  Mary  made  room  for 
our  Lord's  reparation  of  it ;  and  thus  ....  it  follows  that,  as 
Eve  co-operated  in  effecting  a  great  evil,  Mary  co-operated  in 
effecting  a  much  greater  good."  Can  any  logic  beat  that  ?  Let 
your  readers  peruse  Newman's  historic  letter  to  Pusey — the 
logical  Pusey  who  described  Lii^hop  Colenso's  teaching  as 
"  Colenso's  heathenism,"  and  yet  called  the  Church  of  England, 
in  which  Colenso  lived  and  died  a  Bishop,  a  "  branch  of  the 
Catholic  Church " !  Of  course  otlier  members  of  the  same 
church  thought  Pusey  the  bigger  "  heathen  "  of  the  two  (as  I 
will  show  later  on)  because  of  his  ''  Popery  "  and  "Komanism." 

1  turn  now  to  the  earlier  part  of  the  third  century,  and  begin 
with  St.  Hippolytus,  Bishop  of  Porto,  who  was  a  pupil  of  St. 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  and  coeval  with  the  great  Origen.  In 
one  of  the  fragments  of  his  writings,  which  liave  been  preserved, 
he  has  these  words:  "And  the  ark  of  incorruptible  woods  was 

the  Saviour But  the  Lord  was  without  sin,  made  as 

regards  His  human  nature  of  incorruptible  woods,  that  is,  of 
the  Virgin  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  covered  over  within  and  with- 
out, as  it  were,  with  the  most  pure  gold  of  God  the  "Word." 
This  likening  of  Mary  to  the  incorruptible  wood,  out  of  which 
Christ,  the  Ark,  was  made,  is  a  favorite  comparison  with  the 


112  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

Fathers,  as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  see.  How  happily  it  sug- 
gests the  purity  of  her  conception. 

St.  Gregory  Thauinatargus  (the  wonder-worker),  Bishop  of 
Neo-Cfesarea,  another  of  Origen's  pupils,  is  an  illustrious  wit- 
ness to  Catholic  tradition  about  Mary  in  this  century.  He  was 
certainly  present  at  the  lirst  council  of  Antioch,  convened  to 
condemn  Paal  of  Samosata,  in  A.D,  2G4.  He  died  in  the  fol- 
lowing year.  This  illustrious  Saint  speaks  of  Mary  as  "the 
pure  and  chaste  and  immaculate  and  holy  Virgin  Mary  ";  again, 
as  "  the  immaculate  flower  of  life  ";  as  "  the  ever  verdant  Para- 
dise of  immortality";  as  "the  perennial  fountain ";  as  "the 
ever  verdant  Vine."  Homily  on  the  Annunciation,  Migne, 
PP.  Graeei,  Tonie  x.,  p.  1152.  He  compares  her  in  the  same 
place  to  the  Virgin  soil  out  of  which  Adam  was  formed,  when  the 
earth  was  not  yet  subject  to  the  curse.  He  describes  her  nearly 
in  the  same  words  as  St.  Hippolytus — "the  Ark  covered  over 
with  gold  from  within  and  from  without."  In  a  second  Homily 
on  the  same  subject  he  introdiices  the  Archangel  Gabriel  as 
addressing  her  on  the  day  of  the  Annunciation  in  the  follow- 
ing terms :  "All  the  celestial  Powers  salute  thee,  the  holy  Virgin, 
by  my  mouth.  And  what  is  more,  He  who  is  Lord  of  all  the 
celestial  powers  has  chosen  thee,  the  holy  and  all-adorned  one, 
from  among  all  creatures;  and  by  thy  holy,  and  chaste  and 
pure  and  immaculate  womb,  the  bright-shining  Pearl  comes 
forth  for  the  salvation  of  the  whole  world ;  since  thou  hast 
been  made  the  holy  one,  and  more  glorious,  and  more  pure, 
and  more  saintly  than  all  the  rest  of  human  kind,  having  a 
mind  whiter  than  snow,  and  thy  soul  more  purified  than  the 
finest  gold." 

Again  he  calls  her  "  an  Immaculate  Virgin  ";  "  incapable  of 
corruption";  "God's  rational  Paradise";  "Another  Heaven 
upon  earth  ";  "  The  pure  Bridal-chamber  of  the  generation  of 
the  Word  according  to  the  flesh";  "The  Immaculate  Virgin 
Mother  of  an  orphaned  world  ";  "  The  Living  Temple  of  God." 

It  is  my  duty  here  to  remind  your  readers  that  doubt  has 
been  cast  upon  the  authorship  of.  these  homilies.  Cardinal 
Bellarmine  and  Dupin  doubted  about  them,  but  I  must  also 
add  that  the  critics  are  ten  to  one  against  them,  including  the 


A  Rejoinder.  113 

learned  Protestant,  Gerard  Voss.  For  us  the  question  is  com- 
paratively unimportant ;  for  every  thing  conspires  to  assign 
them  an  early  date.  And,  moreover,  I  am  not  at  present  seek- 
ing to  prove  a  doctrine  by  the  authority  and  weight  of  great 
names,  but  to  discover  the  general  mind  of  the  early  church 
respecting  the  Mother  of  God.  And,  therefore,  whether  these 
homilies  were  preached  by  the  illustrious  Bishop  of  Neo-Ca-'s- 
area,  or  by  St.  Chrysostom,  or  by  Macarius  is  comparatively  of 
small  importance. 

My  next  witness  shall  be  St.  Dionysius  of  Alexandria  (A.U. 
247),  the  great  champion  of  the  Catholic  faith  against  the 
heresy  of  Paul  of  Samosata.  In  a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  this 
heresiarch  he  speaks  of  our  Lady  as  "  Christ's  Holy  Tabernacle, 
not  made  with  hands."  He  says  that  "Christ  was  conceived 
in  the  womb  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  the  Holy  Ghost  descending 
upon  her ;  and  as  lie  alone  knew  the  order  of  His  conception 
and  Birth,  preserving  the  Mother  incorruptible  and  blessed 
from  head  to  foot."  He,  too,  like  St.  Gregory,  calls  her  "a 
Virginal  Paradise."  Lahheum,  T.  1,  pp.  900-907.  Moreover, 
tliese  expressions  are  not  merely  the  individual  testimony  of 
the  Alexa-ndrian  Patriarch — they  have  a  sort  of  synodical  au- 
thority, for  the  letter  was  written  by  the  authority,  and  as  the 
expression  of  the  doctrine,  of  the  Antiochene  Fathers. 

POSTSCKIPT. 

In  his  Strictures  on  my  Rejoinder  the  Vicar  does  not  dare 
to  deny  my  charges  against  Bishop  Wordsworth,  whom  he  had 
the  misfortune  to  introduce  into  this  discussion.  They  are 
literally  true.  On  turning  to  Wordsworth's  Greek  Testament, 
Vol.  2,  p.  272, 1  find  that  this  learned  bigot  has  actually  been 
guilty  of  the  literary  forgery  which  I  have  pointed  out  in  the 
foregoing  letter.  I  will  now  set  forth  the  whole  matter,  and 
thus  give  my  readers  the  opportunity  to  pronounce  judgment 
on  the  honesty  and  knowledge  of  Catholic  doctrine  of  another 
Anglican  Bishop. 

In  his  note  on  Rorrocms  xvi.  20,  Wordsworth  writes : 

"  Satan  now  rules  at  Rome,  but  the  Seed  of  tJie  Woman  has 


11-i  IrsK,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

bruised  tlie  fierpeiit's  liead,  accord! njj;  to  the  first  propliccy  in 
Holy  Scripture  ((tcu.  iii.  15), 

"  After  tlie  recent  perversion  of  tliat  ])ropliecy,  in  tlie  Papal 
Uecree  on  the  Immaculate  Conception  (Rome,  Dec.  8,  1854), 
wherein  this  act  of  bruising  tlie  serpent's  head  is  applied  to  the 
Virgin  Mari/,  as  her  special  prerogative,  it  is  not  irrelevant  to 
cite  the  following  testimony  to  the  truth,  from  the  j)en  of  the 
learned  Komanist  Cotnr  lentator,  Cornelins  a  La^pide,  in  his 
note  here  (Rom.  xvi.  20) : 

(A  Lapide's  very  words  from  his 
commentary  now  before  me) : 

*•  Alludit  (St.  Paul)  ad  Oenes. 


iii.  15,  IPSA  (vel  ut  directe  ha- 
bent  Hebraea,  Hm,  id  est  Ipsum 
Semen,  sive,  proles  mulieris,  puta 
Christus),  conteret  caput  tuum." 


(A  Lapide's  words  according  to 
Wordswortli) : 

"  '  Alludit  apostolus  ad  Genes. 
iii.  15,  ut  directe  habent  Hebraica 
Hu  Hic,  id  est  Ipsum  Semen,  sive 
Proles  mulieris,  puta  Christus, 
contei-et  caput  tuum. '  " 


Now,  is  not  this  an  infamous  specimen  of  literary  forgery  ? 
He  suppresses  Ipsa  from  a  Lapide's  text,  and  inteqwlates  Hie! 
Are  all  Anglican  Bishops  and  Yicars  alike  ?  Forty  years  ago 
two  well-known  Anglican  Ministers  who  shone  among  the 
brightest  lights  of  Exeter  Hall — the  Rev.  Dr.  McGee  and  Rev. 
Dr.  Todd — deliberately  forged  and  gave  to  the  world  in  its 
pretended  Latin  original,  a  Papal  Brief,  from  Pope  Gregory 
XVI.  to  the  Bishops  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  And  even 
though  convicted,  they  would  not  confess,  until  the  forgery 
had  accomplished  its  end.  History  repeats  itself  to-day  in 
Wordsworth  and  the  Vicar.  The  latter  is  not  only  convicted 
of  literary  forgery — and  on  his  own  confession — but  he  scattered 
broadcast  tlie  forged  speech  of  Bishop  Strossmayer  because  he 
thought  it  '■'advantageous  to  our  church,"  as  he  wrote  to  the 
New  York  67  urch  Eclectic.  Aud  worse  than  that — for,  even 
after  I  had  convinced  him  that  the  alleged  speech  was  a 
forgery,  he  publicly  solicited  "  ^m7(1-<wi^  "  subscriptions  to  en- 
able him  to  circulate  it  more  widely  !  And  yet  Bishop  King- 
don  continues  lo  him  his  license  to  preach  what  they  agree  to 
consider — the  Gospel !  In  the  face  of  these  blazing  facts  is  it 
not  a  fair,  legitimate  inference  that  the  Anglican  Church  ap- 
proves and  admires,  or  certainly  does  not  disapprove  and  con- 


A    lllJOIXDKU.  115 

<lemn,  the  crime  of  forgery,  provided  only  it  be  "  advantageous  " 
to  Anglicanism  ? 

My  readers  will  nc^te  that  AV^ordsworth,  in  the  above  quota- 
tion, is  guilty  of  the  same  idiotic  in)pertinence  as  Bishop  King- 
don,  in  what  he  says  about  the  "perversion"  of  Gen.  iii.  15, 
and  the  "tremendous  importance"  of  7/w«.  Probably  he  now 
knows  better.  Let  me  admonish  Bishop  Kingdon  to  improve 
liis  opportunities  before  "  the  night  cometh." 

R.  F.  Q. 


LETTER  YI. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe  : 

Sir, — I  continue  my  testimony  from  the  3d  century.  St. 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  the  great  Origen's  great  master,  com- 
pares Mary  to  the  church :  "  O  mystic  marvel !  The  universal 
Father  is  one,  and  one  the  universal  "Word;  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  is  one  and  the  same  everywhere.     One  also  is  the  only 

Virgin    mother.      I    love    to    call  her  the    Church 

But  she  is  at  once  Virgin  and  Mother — pure  as  a  virgin,  loving 
as  a  mother.  And  calling  her  children  to  her  she  nurses  them 
with  holy  milk,  viz. :  with  the  "Word  become  her  child."  I 
follow  here  "  Ante-Nicene  Library,"  vol,  IV.,  p.  142,  almost 
verhatim.  Again.  The  mighty  Origeu  (Homily  VL  on  Luke) 
speaking  of  the  angel's  words — "  Hail  full  of  grace,"  says : 
"  For  Mary  alone  is  this  salutation  reserved."  And  (Homily 
VIL  on  Luke)  he  proves  from  the  words  of  Elizabeth  that  our 
Saviour  could  never  have  slighted,  or  reproved,  as  some  early 
heretics  asserted,  his  blessed  mother.  He  writes :  "  Elizabeth 
filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost  said :  Blessed  art  thou  among 
women.  If  Mary  is  pronounced  blessed  by  the  Holy  Ghost 
how  could  the  Saviour  deny  her? "  Speaking  of  Mary's  visit 
to  Elizabeth  (Homily  IX.)  and  that  at  the  sound  of  Mary's 
voice  Elizabeth  was  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  he  says :  "  If 


116  IPriE,    Il'8A,    Il'SUM. 

in  one  hour  she  (Elizabeth)  had  gained  eo  much,  we  may  con- 
jecture how  nnich  John  gained  in  throe  months  by  Mary's 
presence  with  Elizabetli."  Finally  censuring  those  who  spoke 
in  an  unbecoming  manner  of  the  "bless'xl  Woman,"  he  says: 
"  In  what  respect  does  such  language  difter  from  that  of  those 
wlio  pour  abuse  on  others  on  the  public  streets,  and  whose 
words  are  unworthy  of  any  serious  attention  i " 

Again.  St.  Arclielaus,  liishop  of  Caschar  in  Mesopotamia, 
in  his  disputation  with  the  Ilcrosiarch  ^fanes  writes:  ".lust  as 
all  the  Law  and  the  Prophets  are  summed  up  in  two  words,  so 
also  all  our  hope  is  made  to  depend  (hinges)  on  the  birth  by  the 
blessed  Mary."     Ante-JV.  Z/7>.,  vol.  xx.,  p.  395. 

To  close  this  century  with  another  extract  from  Second 
Honn'Iy  of  St.  Gregory.  He  says:  ''With  what  words  of 
laudation,  then,  shall  we  describe  her  fMary's)  Virgin-dignity  ? 
AVitli  what  indications  and  proclamations  of  praise  shall  we 
celebrate  her  staiidess  figure?  With  what  spiritual  song  or 
word  shall  we  honor  her  who  is  most  glorious  among  the 
angels  ?  She  is  ]ilanted  in  the  house  of  God  like  a  fruitful 
olive  that  the  Holy  Spirit  overshadowed  ;  and  hy  her  means 
are  we  called  mns  and  Iieirs  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ.  She 
is  the  ever-blooming  paradise  of  incorruptibility,  wherein  is 
planted  the  tree  that  giveth  life,  and  that  furnisheth  to  all  the 
fruits  of  immortality.  She  is  the  hoast  and  glory  of  Virgins, 
and  the  exaltation  of  ^fathers.  She  is  the  sure  support  of  the 
helieving,  and  the  succourer  (or  example,  Katorthoma,)  of  the 
pious.  She  is  the  vesture  of  light,  and  the  domicile  of  virtue 
(or  truth).  She  is  the  ever-flowing  fountain,  wherein  the  water 
of  life  sprang  and  produced  the  Lord's  incarnate  manifestation. 
She  is  the  monument  of  righteousness  ;  and  all  who  become 

LOVERS  OF  HER,  AND  SET  THEIR  AFFECTIONS  ON  VIRGIN-LIKE  IN- 
GENUOUSNESS AND  PURITY,  SHALL  ENJOY  THE  GRACE  OF  ANGELS." 

Ante-Nicene  Library,  vol.  xx.,  p.  128.  This  is  an  excellent 
Protestant  translation  of  some  of  the  Catholic  Fathers  in  24 
vols.  To  any  of  your  readers  desirous  of  reading  those  beauti- 
ful Homilies  of  St.  Gregory  on  the  blessed  Virgin  I  will  be 
happy  to  loan  my  copy. 

The  most  eminent  source  from  which  I  am  able  to  gather 


A  Kpioindkr.  117 

tlic  sense  of  the  Church  in  the  Fourth  Century  on  the  (li<;nity 
and  ])rero^ati(»n  of  Mary  is  the  Father  next  on  my  list.  It  is 
St.  Ephrem,  the  Syrian,  who  was  ordained  priest  by  St.  Basil, 
one  of  the  four  Doctors  of  the  (Jreek  Church.  His  praises  are 
celebrated  b};  St.  Gregory,  of  ^ijHKa,  St.  (nirys(»st<)ni,St.  Basil, 
Theodorot,  St.  Jerome  and  others,  who  call  him  "the  blaster 
of  the  World,''  and  "the  Euphrates  of  the  Church";  and  who 
tell  us  that  his  writinirs  were  publicly  read  in  many  churches 
next  after  the  Divine  Scriptures.  lie  died  in  379.  He  is  a 
witness  for  the  Syrians  proper  and  the  neighboring  Orientals, 
in  contrast  to  the  Graeco-Syrians. 

St.  P^phrem,  then,  thus  speaks  of  our  Lady  in  a  Ilomily, 
which  is  dedicated  to  her  praises.  He  calls  her  "  the  new  mys- 
tical Heaven,"  "the  Vine  fruitful  in  sweet  odors,"  "Fountain 
issuing  forth  from  the  House  of  God."  "VVe  have,  from  the 
Syrian  and  Greek  Codices  and  on  the  authority  of  Voss  and 
the  Assemani,  certain  prayers  to  Mary,  which  he  composed. 
His  fourth  prayer  is,  from  beginning  to  end,  so  illustrious  an 
example  of  the  devotion  of  the  Eastern  Church  to  her  at 
this  early  time  that  I  wish  I  could  give  it  entire,  but  I  must 
abridge : 

"  My  Lady,  most  holy  Mother  of  God,  full  of  grace,  recejv 
taele  of  tlie  divinity  of  thy  only  begotten  Son,  fiery  throne  far 
more  glorious  than  the  four-formed  "  (of  Ezechiel)  "  of  the  im- 
mortal and  invisible  Father,  all-pure,  all-immaculate,  wholly 
.  without  spot,  ....  wholly  most  blessed,  all-inviolate,  all- 
1  venerable,  all-honorable,  wholly  to  be  blessed  and  praised,  and 
honored  and  desired,  Virgin  in  soul,  and  body  and  mind, 
throne  of  the  King  who  sitteth  above  the  Cherubim,  Heavenly 
Gate  through  which  we  hasten  from  earth  to  Heaven,  Bride  of 
God  by  whom  we  are  reconciled,  unexpected  miracle,  .... 
Manifestation  of  the  bidden  mystery  of  God,  Invincible  de- 
fence. Powerful  aid.  Living  fountain,  Exhaustless  ocean  of 
divine  and  unutterable  graces  and  gifts,  Height  more  sublime 
than  that  of  the  heavenly  powers.  Common  glory  of  nature, 
Exuberance  of  all  things  noble.  Queen  of  all  after  the  Trinity, 
the  other  Paraclete  after  the  Paraclete,  and  after  the  Mediator 
the  Mediatrix  of  the  whole  world.  Chariot  of  the  intellectual 


118  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Sun, — tlmt  true  liglit  wliicli  lightenetli  every  man  coming  into 
the  world,  the  Immaculate  Vesture  of  Him  who  clothes  Ilhn- 
self  with  liglit  as  with  a  garment,  Bridge  of  the  whole  world 
that  leadeMi  us  to  the  highest  heaven,  higher  and  far  more 
glorious  heyond  all  comparison  than  Cherubim  and  Seraphim, 
lirightness  of  the  Angels,  Safety  of  men,  JVfother  and  hand- 
maid of  that  Star  which  knows  no  setting,  Brightness  of  the 
true  and  mystical  day.  Abyss  of  the  unsearchal)lc  goodness  of 
God,  mostiirm  foundation  of  the  true  faith.  Place  most  easily 
containing  Ilim  who  knows  no  ])lace,  ....  fulness  of  the 
graces  of  the  Trinity,  holding  the  second  place  after  the  Trin- 
ity, Security  of  those  who  stand,  Kestoration  of  those  who  fall, 
Arouser  of  the  lukewarm,  treasure  of  undctiled  life.  Cloud 
dropping  down  celestial  dew  on  the  earth,  Ladder  by  which 
heavenly  angels  descend  to  us.  Haven  to  the  tempest-tost,  Joy 
of  the  afflicted,  Patroness  of  the  injured,  Help  of  the  deserted, 
Strength  of  the  weak,  Succor  of  those  who  are  weighed  down, 
Staff  of  the  blind,  Saving  Guide  of  the  wanderers,  Sure  Help 
in  troubles,  holy  ark  by  whom  we  have  been  saved  from  the 
deluge  of  ini(juity,  unconsumed  l^ush  which  Moses  saw  who 
looked  OT)  God,  Golden  Censor  in  which  the  word,  setting  light 
to  the  flesh,  filled  the  world  with  sweet  odors,  and  the  devia- 
tions of  disobedience  were  utterly  consumed.  Tablet  on  which 
God  hits  written,  Candelabrum  of  seven  lights  whose  splendor 
surpasses  the  rays  of  the  sun.  Holy  Tabernacle  which  the  spir- 
itual Bescleel  set  up,  lloyal  Chariot,  vessel  filled  with  Manna, 
enclosed  Garden,  sealed  Fountain  whose  most  pure  streams 
water  tlie  whole  world,  Hod  of  Aaron  that  buds  by  the  power 
of  God,  Fleece  of  Gideon  wet  with  dew.  Book  written  by  the 
hand  of  God,  by  which  the  handwriting  of  Adam  has  been  torn 
lip,  Mountain  of  God,  Holy  mountain,  in  which  it  hath  pleaded 
God  to  dwell,  Masterpiece  of  the  tretnendous  economy  of 
Grace,  lovely  dwelling  place  of  the  divine  al)asement.  Recon- 
ciliation of  the  world,  ....  Model  of  Virginity,  precious 
vision  of  prophets,  most  manifest  fulfilment  of  all  prophecy, 
ceaseless  voice  of  Apostles,  invisible  confidence  of  those  who 
conquer,  ....  my  lady,  my  joy,  my  deepl^m  advocacy  ivith 
God  !     Behold  my  faith,  and  my  heaven-inspired  desire,  and 


A    KlCJOINDKR.  119 

as  one  having  compassion  and  able  to  lielp  me ;  and  since  thou 
art  tlie  Mother  of  llim  wlio  alone  is  good  and  merciful,  receive 
my  soul  and  deign  to  place  it,  hy  thy  mediathm  and  defence, 
at  the  right  hand  of  thy  oidy  begotten  Son,  and  in  the  repose 
of  His  elect  and  saints.  I  have  no  other  help  and  defence  save 
thee.  In  thee  I  ho])e  I  shall  obtain  my  wish.  In  thee  I  glory. 
Do  not  by  reason  of  my  many  sins  turn  thy  face  away  from 
me,  thy  unworthy  servant.  For  thou  hast  the  will  and  the 
power,  since  thou  hast  generated  one  of  the  Trinity.  Thou 
hast  the  means  of  persuading  and  bending.  Thou  hast  those 
hands,  with  which  in  an  unspeakable  way  thou  didst  carry 
Ilim,  those  breasts  with  which  thou  gavest  Iliiu  milk.  Call  to 
mind  the  swaddling  clothes,  and  the  rest  of  His  bringing  up 
from  infancv.  Join  to  thine  what  are  His  own — the  Cross,  the 
Blood,  the  Wounds,  by  which  we  are  saved.  Do  not  remove 
far  from  me,  I  beseech  thee,  thy  protection,  but  aid  and  pro- 
tect, and  ever  be  at  hand.  For  He  is  thy  debt(jr  Who  said — 
lienor  thy  father  and  thy  mother ;  and  how  much  the  rather 
will  He,  who  willed  to  be  reckoned  among  servants,  observe 
the  law  of  gratitude  and  His  own  decree  in  thy  regard  who 
served  Him  in  that  generation  which  was  redemption.  W/ietr- 
fore  also  coriftideriiuj  it  as  Ills  own  (jloryto  yield  to  thy  inter- 
cession. He  fulfils  thy  petitions,  as  thouyh  it  'were  an  ohliya- 
tion.  Only  despise  not  me  unworthy  ;  nor  let  the  foulness  of 
my  actions  stay  thy  innnense  mercy,  mother  of  my  God,  fondest 
above  measure  of  names.  For  there  is  no  stronger  pledge  of 
victory  than  thy  help.  For  thou  hast  wiped  away  all  tears 
from  the  face  of  the  earth.  Thou  hast  filled  the  creation  with 
every  kind  of  benefit.  Thou  hast  brought  gladness  to  things 
in  heaven,  salvation  to  things  on  earth.  Thou  hast  reconciled 
the  creature,  and  appeased  the  creator.  Thou  hast  lowered 
the  angels  and  exalted  men.  Thou  hast  mediated  by  thyself 
between  things  above  and  things  below  ....  We  have 
thee  as  the  protectress  of  our  salvation.  The  congregation  of 
Christians  has  thee  as  its  strongest  wall  of  defence.  Thou  hast 
opened  the  gates  of  Paradise.  Thou  hast  pre|)ared  an  ascen- 
sion to  heaven.  Thou  hast  associated  us  with  thyself  and  God. 
By  thee,  O  Immaculate,  and  thee  only,  all  glory,  honor,  sane- 


120  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

thy,  has  been,  is,  and  ever  ^\•ill  be,  from  the  time  of  the  first 
Adam  even  to  the  end  of  the  world,  to  Apostles,  Prophets,  the 
just,  and  to  the  humble  of  heart.  And  in  thee  rejoice  the 
whole  creation,  tilled  with  grace.  And  I  confide  in  thee,  for 
thy  sake,  who  didst  most  truly  bring  forth,  according  to  the 
flesh,  the  true  God,  to  whom  is  due  all  glory,  honor  and 
adoration  with  the  unoriginated  Father,  and  His  all -holy  and 
good  and  life-giving  Spirit,  now  and  ever  and  throughout  all 
ages — Amen."  I  have  given  but  half  of  this  wondrous  prayer. 
Subtract  from  it  all  we  may  be  inclined  to  set  down  to  Lhe 
glowing  warmth  of  Oriental  devotion  and  there  yet  remains 
enough,  one  would  think,  to  startle  and  astonish  those  who 
have  l)een  led  to  imagine  that  the  cidtiis  of  Mary  is  a  corrup- 
tion of  comparatively  recent  times — the  result  of  a. /torrid  tnis- 
2)rint  (/)  of  "a"  for  "e"  forsooth !  St.  Ephrem  has  literally 
ransacked  Old  and  New  Testament,  in  order  to  find  a  type  of 
Mary  in  every  thing  which  has  in  any  icay  heen  hrouijld  near 
to  God.  The  exalted  ]ire-eminence  which  she  holds  in  this 
prayer  can  scarcely  find  its  parallel  in  our  modern  books  of 
Catholic  piety.  And  nothing  can  be  more  unreserved  and  un- 
doubting,  than  the  confidence  which  he  expresses  from  first  to 
last  in  the  power  of  her  Intercession  and  Patronage. 

I  pass  on,  omitting,  for  brevity's  sake,  quotations  from  the 
famous  St.  Chrysostom,  and  from  St.  Epiphanius  who  speaks 
eloquently  for  Egypt,  Palestine  and  Cyprus,  to  the  fifth  cent- 
ury. I  begin  with  St.  Proclus,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople, 
and  a  disciple  of  Chrysostom.  After  his  consecration  to  the 
Episcopate  of  Cyzicum  he  preached  a  celebrated  sermon  in 
presence  of  the  heresiareh  Nestorius,  and  in  the  latter's  own 
cathedral,  on  "  The  Praises  of  Mary,  etc."  These  are  his  open- 
ing words:  "The  Holy  Virgin  Mary,  Mother  of  God,  has  called 
us  together  in  this  place  ;  she,  that  pure  treasure  of  virginity — 
the  spiritual  paradise  of  the  Second  Adam — the  chosen  place 
in  which  the  two  natures  of  Jesus  Christ  were  united  ;  she,  the 
festival  of  saving  reconciliation — the  bridal-chamber  in  which 
the  Word  of  the  Father  espoused  our  human  nature  ;  She,  the 
living  bush  which  the  fire  of  Divine  parturition  did  not  con- 
sume ;  She  of  a  truth  that  light  cloud,  who  bore  in  her  body 


A  IIe.joindek.  121 

Him  who  sitteth  above  the  Cherubim ;  She,  that  most  pure 
Fleece,  watered  with  celestial  dew,  with  which  the  Shepherd 
has  clothed  his  sheep ;  She,  handmaid  and  Mother,  Virgin  and 
Heaven  itself ;  She,  the  only  Bridge  by  which  God  canie  down 
to  men ;  She,  the  awful  Loom  of  the  Incarnation,  in  which  the 
tunic  of  that  union  was  woven  after  an  ineffable  manner,  whose 
weaver  was  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  the  power  overshadowing 
from  on  high  ;  the  wool  of  which  was  the  old  fleece  of  Adam  , 
the  warp,  the  unpolluted  Flesh  derived  from  the  Virgin  ;  the 
shuttle,  the  inmieasurable  grace  of  Him  who  bore  it ;  the  Arti- 
ficer the  Word  of  God  descending," 

My  next  witness  is  St.  Cyril,  Patriarch  of  Alexandria,  who 
was  prominently  connected,  hke  St.  Proclus,  with  the  Nestor- 
iau  heresy.  The  Fathers  had  just  arrived  at  Ephesus,  previous 
to  the  first  session  of  the  council,  when  St.  Cyril  preached  as 
follows  before  them  all : 

"Hail  Mary,  Mother  of  God,  venerable  Treasure  of  the  whole 
world,  inextinguishable  Lamp,  Crown  of  Virginity,  Sceptre  of  Or- 
thodoxy, indestructible  Temple,  chosen  place  of  Him  wlio  knows 
no  place,  Virgin  and  Mother  ....  Hail  thou,  who  didst  contain 
in  thy  holy  and  virginal  womb  the  uncontainable ;  thou,  by  wliom 
the  Trinity  is  glorified,  by  ivhom  the  precious  Cross  is  made  knoion 
and  adored  in  all  the  ivorld ;  by  whom  heaven  is  made  glad,  by 
whom  angels  and  archangels  rejoice ;  by  whom  devils  are  put  to 
flight;  by  whom  the  tempter,  the  evil  one,  fell  from  heaven;  by 
whom  the  fallen  creature  is  received  up  into  heaven ;  by  wliom  the 
whole  creation,  fettered  in  the  chains  of  an  insane  idolatry,  has 
come  to  8  complete  knowledge  of  the  truth ;  by  whom  holy  baptism 
is  given  to  them  that  believe,  by  whom  the  oil  of  gla(hicss ;  by 
whom  churches  liave  been  founded  everywhere ;  hy  whom  all  the 
nations  are  brought  to  penance  !  And  what  shall  I  say  more  ?  By 
whom  the  only-begotten  Son  of  God  shone  forth,  a  light  to  tliem 
that  sat  in  darkness  and  in  the  shadow  of  death ;  by  whom  prophets 
prophesied;  by  whom  Apostles  preached  salvation  to  the  Gentiles; 
by  whom  the  dead  are  raised  to  life;  by  whom  kings  reign  thi'ough 
the  grace  of  the  Holy  Trinity.  What  man  is  there  tvho  may  emi- 
merate  the  multitudinous  graces  of  Mary  ?  ....  0  miracle !  The 
wonder  strikes  me  dumb  with  amazement." 

The  next  whom  I  shall  quote  is  St.  Basil  of  Seleucia,  one  of 
the  Fathers  present  at  the  Council  of  Chalcedon — the  fourth 


122  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Ecumenical  Council,  A.D.  451.  He  addresses  Mary  in  this 
wise :  "  O  sacred  womb  Avhich  received  God  ;  in  which  the 
liandwriting  of  sin  was  torn  to  pieces."  He  exclaims,  "  what 
gifts  sufficiently  worthy  of  her  can  we  offer,  of  whom  all  earthly 
things  are  unworthy  ? "  He  calls  her  "  The  Amaranthine  Para- 
dise of  Chastity  ;  " — "  Med'mtnx  heticeen  God  and  Man " — 
"  Temple  truly  worthy  of  God ; "  and  he  bursts  out  into  the 
following  ardent  exclamation — "  O  all-holy  Virgin,  of  whom  he 
who  says  all  that  is  venerable  and  glorious  errs  not  from  the 
truth,  hut  fails  in  equalling  thy  merit.''' 

St.  James,  Bishop  of  Batnae  in  Mesopotamia,  in  the  district 
of  Sarug,  joins  the  fifth  with  the  sixth  century.  He  is  always 
quoted  in  nearly  all  the  religious  books  of  the  Syrians  with  St. 
Ephrem,  and  is  called  "the  flute  of  the  Spirit " — "  the  Harp  of 
the  Church  of  the  Faithful."  In  a  sermon  on  the  Blessed 
Virgin,  he  says :  "  If  any  stain  or  defect  had  been  in  her  soul 
(the  Lord)  would  have  sought  out  another  mother  for  Himself, 
who  would  be  free  from  all  sin."  Bib.  Orien.  Clem. —  Vat. 
vol.  1,  p.  301.     Simon  Assemani,  Ilomse,  1719. 

To  pass  on  to  the  sixth  century.  I  content  myself  with  two 
witnesses.  The  first  shall  be  St.  Sophronius,  Patriarch  of  Jeru- 
salem, an  illustrious  defender  of  the  Catholic  faith  against  the 
heresy  of  the  Monothelites.  In  his  synodical  letter  which  he  ad- 
dressed to  Sergius,  the  heretical  Patriarch  of  Constantinople, 
he  speaks  of  "  Mary  the  holy  and  illustrious,  and  heavenly- 
minded,  and  free  from  all  stain  in  body  and  soul  and  mind," 
Again  in  a  sermon  on  the  Annunciation,  published  by  Father 
Ballerini  in  his  Sylloge,  he  introduces  the  Archangel  Gabriel  as 
addressing  our  lady  in  this  wise : 

"Hail,  Mother  of  Supercelestial  Joy !  Hail,  nurse  of  sublimest 
joy!  Hail,  metropolis  of  saving  g-ladness!  Hail,  joint  cause 
of  immortal  joy  !  Hail,  mystical  inn  of  ineffable  joy!  Hail, 
admirable  soil  of  unspeakable  joy  !  Hail,  altogether  blessed- 
fountain  of  unfailing  joy!  Hail,  God  bearing  heir-loom  of 
eternal  joy  I  Hail,  most  flourishing  plant  of  vivifying  joy ! 
Hail,  unwedded  Mother  of  God!  Hail,  Virgin  inviolate  after 
parturition !  Hail  vision  most  eminently  wonderful  of  all  wonders ! 
Who  can  declare  thy  glory?    Who  can  tell  the  wonder  that  thou 


A  Eejoinder.  123 

art?  Who  shall  dare  to  proclaim  thy  greatness?  Thou  hast  adorned 
human  nature.-  Thou  hast  surpassed  the  oi-ders  of  angels.  Thou 
hast  thrown  into  the  shade  the  brightness  of  Archangels.  Thou 
hast  shown  the  high  seats  of  the  Throne  to  be  beneath  thee.  Thou 
hast  put  down  the  height  of  the  Dominations.  Thou  hast  outstripped 
tlie  noblest  of  the  Principalities.  Thou  hast  weakened  the  strength 
of  the  Powers.  Tliou  hast  come  forth  a  Virtue  more  powerful  than 
the  Virtues.  Thou  hast  surpassed  with  earthly  eyes  the  many-eyed 
Cherubim.  Thou  hast  ascended  with  the  divinely  agitated  wings  of 
the  soul  above  the  six-winged  Seraphim.  Thou  hast,  lastly,  far  sur- 
passed every  creature,  inasnmch  as  thou  shinest  with  a  purity  above 
every  creature,  and  didst  receive  within  thee  the  Creator  of  all 
creatures,  and  didst  bear  him  in  thy  womb,  and  didst  give  him  birth, 
and  hast  alone  of  all  creation  become  Mother  of  God." 

My  second  witness  is  St.  Anastasius,  the  Sinaite,  who  says  : 

"  And  who  (tell  me,  I  pray)  whether  of  men  or  devils  will  dare 
to  say,  that  she,  who  is  of  the  same  essence  with  God,  as  regards 
the  flesh,  is  not  after  the  image  and  likeness  of  Him,  who  was  born 
of  her?  For  how  is  she  mother  of  such  a  Son,  if  she  bear  not  in 
herself  whole  and  unbroken  the  image  of  her  offspring  ? " 

Who  can  be  so  Winded  witli  prejudice  as  not  to  perceive  in 
these  quotations,  borrowed  from  siiccessive  centuries,  an  Apos- 
tohc  tradition,  which  is  as  far  removed  from  the  least  heterodox 
conception  of  Mary  professed  by  my  opponents  and  the  An- 
glican church  generally  as  Heaven  is  from  earth.  Voices  reach 
us  from  Syria, — from  Mesopotamia, — from  Plicenicia, — from 
Constantinople, — from  Jerusalem  and  Mount  Sinai  which,  one 
and  all,  conspire  in  ascribing  to  Mary  a  solitary  pre-eminence 
in  God's  creation  of  grace.  Tj^ies  are  borrowed  everywhere 
from  the  Old  Testament  of  all  that  is  most  holy  and  most 
singular  in  Divine  Benediction.  In  giving  expression  to 
their  inward  perception  of  the  beauty  and  hoHness  of  Mary, 
the  writers  have  exhausted  the  rich  sources  of  tlie  Greek 
tongue ;  and  if  we  would  desire  to  put  into  words  our  own 
thoughts  we  can  only  repeat  the  language  that  was  long  ago 
familiar  to  them.  The  Catholic  Church  in  the  East  and  in 
the  West  simply  took  up  the  note  of  Mary's  holy  song: 
"  Behold  from  henceforth  all  generations  shall  call  me  blessed  " 


124  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

— and  went  forth  resounding  it  tliroughout  the  four  corners 
of  the  globe.' 

My  purpose  in  this  letter  and  in  my  last  was  that  your  read- 
ers should  see  what  the  Saints  and  Doctors  in  the  Primitive 
Greeli  Church  thought  of  our  blessed  Lady — how  they  spoke 
of  her ;  what  was  the  picture  of  her  they  had  over  before  their 
eyes — and  tliis,  remember,  in  regions  where  "  Ipsa  "  was  un- 
known !  I  ask  your  readers  to  examine  this  picture  well,  to 
take  in  its  background,  to  study  each  finishing  stroke  of  the 
pencil.  Then  put  in  the  foreground  Bishop  Kingdon  and  his 
Vicar  holding  up  their  little  diagram — *■'' Ipse-Ipsa  "  while  they 
weej)  over  the  *'  awful  consequences "  of  the  "  misprint." 
What  a  spectacle  to  men  and  angels ! 


LETTER  FROM  THE  YICAK. 

ipse,    ipsa MR,    QUIOLEt's    KEJOINDER — A   CAUTION. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe  : 

Sir, — I  have  no  desire  to  intrude  out  of  my  turn,  but  as  Mr. 
Quigley  has  invited  a  confiding  public  to  borrow  what  he  calls 
an  "  Excellent  Protestant  translation  "  of  the  so-called  Homilies 
of  S.  Gregory  Thaumaturgus,  I  am  in  duty  bound  to  give  them 
a  caution. 

Let  any  one  who  may  avail  himself  of  Mr.  Quigley's  offer 
turn,  as  he  directs,  to  p.  128  of  vol.  xx.  in  Clarke's  Ante-Nlcejie 
Lihrary^  then  let  him  refer  to  the  Table  of  Contents  and  the 
Introd-ctory  notice  and  he  will  find  that  the  translator  has 
taken  special  care  to  separate  between  the  "Acknowledged" 
and  the  "  Dubious  or  Spurious  "  writings  of  the  Saint,  and  that 
tiie  latter,  wherewith  the  Church  has  for  centuries  been  de- 
ceived, are  very  copious.  He  will  next  observe  that  Mr.  Quig- 
ley's quotation  is  taken  from  this  latter  part  without  even  a 
hint  as  to  its  character. 

A  reference  to  Smith  and  Wace's  Dictionarrj  of  Christian 

'  See  Fatlier  Harper's  Peace  through  the  Truth,  Vol.  1,  p.  401. 


A  Rejoinder.  125 

Biography^  p.  737,  shows  tliat  these  Homilies  belong  not  to  the 
merely  Dubious  but  to  the  Undoubtedly  Spurious  writings 
attributed  to  Gregory. 

I  abstain  at  present  from  further  remark,  although  most  of 
Mr.  Quigley's  citations  are  equally  misleading. 

Yours  truly, 

John  M.  Davenport, 
Priest  of  the  Mission  Church. 
April  23,  1888. 

See  reply  to  above  letter  in  the  "  P.  S."  to  my  next  letter. 

R.  F.  Q. 


LETTER  YII. 

IPSE,   IPSA,   1P8UM — A  REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — Though  it  seems  a  debasing  of  the  mind  further  to 
refute  the  Vicar's  ravings,  I  have  not  yet  done  with  him.  I 
propose  now  to  exhibit  him  in  a  light  so  detestably  lurid  that 
the  sins  he  so  falsely  charged  against  the  Catholic  Church  pale 
into  veniality — even  were  they  true.  There  is  no  reason,  as 
things  go,  why  I  should  not  make  as  nmch  of  Anglican  mis- 
deeds as  the  Vicar  has  tried  to  make  of  ours  ;  only  "  bad  luck 
to  us,"  says  Cardinal  Newinan,  "  we  have  never  kept  a  record 
of  Protestant  scandals."  The  Catholic  mind  does  not  take  to 
that  sort  of  argument,  and,  because  it  does  not  forget  that  non- 
observance  of  the  Decalogue  does  not  abrogate  it.  The  ritual- 
istic mind,  on  the  contrary,  as  we  see  it  displayed  in  the  Vicar, 
would  deny  the  most  rigid  mathematical  deduction  if  seen  to 
involve  any  concession  to  hated  Rome.  In  this  connection, 
however,  I  will  content  myself  with  letting  an  Anglican  author- 
ity introduce  to  your  readers  the  Vicar  in  his  new  character. 
The  Anglican  historian  "Whittaker,  a  Rector  of  the  Established 
Church,  in  his  vindication  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  writes : 


126  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

'■''Fortjery — /  hlusJi  for  the  honor  of  Protestants  while  I  write 
it — seems  to  have  been  peculiar  to  the  IteformedP  Vol.  3,  p. 
2.  Let  us  see  how  the  Vicar  ilhistrates,  if  he  does  not  emulate, 
the  httle  weakness  of  his  pious  theological  ancestors. 

Your  readers  will  remember  his  tactics  over  my  quotation 
from  Prudentius,  a  writer  of  the  Fourth  Century,  who  uses 
Ipsa  as  I  have  fully  set  out  in  my  "  Resume."  lie  is  not  able 
to  offer  a  tittle  of  evidence  against  it  from  any  quarter ;  there- 
fore, he  invents  an  objection,  lie  begins  by  exclaiming :  "  O 
the  fraud,  the  villainy,  the  trickery  of  the  Roman  church ! " 
Because  "  of  her  forgeries,  we  cannot  trust  a  quotation  slie 
gives  from  ancient  authors  till  we  have  thoroughly  sifted  the 
evidence  in  their  favor.*^  So  he  pronounces  my  quotation 
"  spurious,"  but  hastens  to  reassure  us  by  saying,  "  I  shall  make 
a  point  of  enquiring  of  my  friends  in  England  what  critics 
think  of  the  question."  What!  Is  the  "Oxford  twain  "re- 
duced to  tliis  ?  Must  "  learned  friends  "  come  to  the  rescue  on 
a  matter  so  simple  !  Where  is  the  Vicar's  "  critical  apparatus  "  ? 
Cannot  his  pet  authorities — Littledale,  Pusey,  Janus  or  some 
of  his  oft-quoted  dictionaries  and  cyclopaedias — help  him  out? 
Alas !  for  the  honor  of  his  "  dear  Alma  Mater  !  "  Believe 
me,  your  readers  will  not  hear  from  his  "  friends  in  England  " 
or  elsewhere  a  word  in  support  of  his  cowardly  statement  before 
the  "  Greek  Calends."  It  is  simply  the  old  trick  of  giving  an 
inconvenient  question  the  "  three  months  hoist."  Meanwhile 
let  me  assist  the  Vicar  in  liis  dilemma — he  may  send  the  infor- 
mation to  his  "  friends." 

The  best  editions  of  Prudentius'  works  are  those  of  Weit- 
zius,  Heinsius,  Cellarius,  Elzevir  and  Chamillard.  Every  one 
of  these  has  the  Hymn  which  this  pseudo-"  priest "  has  the 
effrontery  to  declare  "  spurious."  He  thus  proves  himself  ad- 
mirably qiialified  for  the  role  he  has  recently  played.  I  mean 
to  say  that  with  his  own  hand  he  has  put  into  circulation  and 
scattered  hroadcast  one  of  the  vilest,  most  sca/ndalous  and  most 
palpable  forgeries  ever  penned.  This  he  had  published  in  an 
American  magazine,  now  on  my  table,  as  the  "  speech "  of  a 
distinguished  living  Catholic  Bishop  at  the  Vatican  Council.  I 
ask  the  careful  attention  of  your  readers  to  what  follows. 


A    RWOINDKR.  127 

Among  tlie  Bishops  at  the  Vatican  Council  who  opposed 
the  definition  of  Papal  Infallibility  on  the  ground  of  its  Inoj)- 
porHincness  waa  the  illustrious  Bishop  Strossuiayer  of  Bosnia, 
Austria.  During  the  Council  certain  notorious  and  infamous 
letters  from  Rome  were  published  in  the  Au(jsbur(j  Gazette^  a 
German  newspaper.  On  the  authority  of  Bishop  Von  Ketteler, 
Bishop  Hefele  (Germans),  and  Cardinal  Manning,  who  were 
members  of  the  Council,  these  teem  with  "  perversions,"  "  false- 
hoods "  and  the  "  most  abject  mendacity."  They  have  been 
translated  into  English  and  published  by  a  Protestant  book- 
seller in  a  volume  entitled — "  Quirinus :  Letters  from  Rome 
on  the  Council."  It  is  recommended  by  Littledale  in  his 
"  Plain  Reasons  "  among  "  Books  on  the  Roman  Controversy  " 
— birds  of  a  feather  flock  together  !  Of  course  the  Vicar  has 
a  copy  of  "Quirinus."  It  professes  to  give  snatches  from 
speeches  which  it  attributes  to  Strossmayer,  but  with  these  I 
am  not  concerned.  I  am  to  deal  with  a  Tract  entitled  "  The 
Gospel  in  the  Vatican,"  and  called  "  the  celebrated  speech  of 
Bishop  Strossmayer  in  the  Vatican  Council,"  80,000  copies  and 
more  of  which  were  printed  in  English.  This  so-called 
"speech"  is  not  mentioned  at  all  in  "Quirinus."  It  is,  as 
your  readers  will  directly  see,  a  ridiculous,  monstrous,  and 
apparent  forgery.  Yet  in  November,  1884,  the  Vicar  sent 
this  Tracts  with  a  letter  ^or  publication  in  the  New  York 
Church  Eclectic  (Ritualistic-z^'A)  Magazine !  We  shall  see  how 
this  professing  stickler  for  literary  honesty  "  sifted  the  evi- 
dence "  of  its  genuineness  before  committing  such  an  abomin- 
able crime,  and  circulating  such  a  fiendish  calumny  on  a 
Catholic  Bishop  who  happened  to  be  far  away  in  Austria.  I 
wonder  how  much  better  he  would  treat  Bishop  Kingdon  if  it 
served  his  turn ! 

Now  here  is  the  Vicar's  letter  as  I  copy  it  from  the  Church 
Eclectic,  January,  1885,  p.  928 : 


128  Ii'SK,  Ipsa,  Ipbum. 

(For  the  Church  Eclectic.) 

BISHOP  STROSSMAYER'S  SPEECH  IN  THE  VATICAN   COUNCIL   OF    1870. 

Nov.  25th,  1884. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  Church  Eclectic : 

Dear  Sir, — Apropos  of  the  Hopkins  v.  Capel  business  icould  it 
not  be  advantageous  to  our  church  to  print  the  enclosed  in  your 
paper  ?  Except  in  this  form  I  have  never  met  with  the  famous 
speech  in  full  of  Strossmayer  at  the  Vatican.  Sevei'al  snatches  from 
his  speeches  appear,  as  doubtless  you  know,  in  "  Quirmus,"  but  not 
this  one.    It  is  the  finest  thing  I  know  of  on  the  opposition  side. 

Strossmayer,  so  the  "letters  from  Rome  "  say,  was  the  most  elo- 
juent  Latin  orator  at  the  Council,  and  his  speech  produced  a  furor. 
True  it  is  that  after  he  returned  to  his  diocese  he,  in  common  witli 
the  rest  of  the  opposition,  swallowed  the  new  dogma  at  the  point  of 
an  anathema,  and  I  have  been  told,  though  I  cannot  vouch  for  the 
truth  of  the  statement,  that  he  is  notv  building  a  stately  cathedral 
in  reparation  for  his  impertinent  opposition  to  the  wishes  of  Pius 
IX.  But  if  so  that  in  no  way  overthrows  his  splendid  arguments, 
but  simply  illustrates  the  horrible  despotism  of  the  Papacy. 

I  remain,  yours  very  truly, 

John  M.  Davenport. 

The  italics  in  this  letter  are  mine.  Comment  would  spoil  its 
uniqueness.  The  "speech"  is  then  printed  at  length,  filling 
about  eleven pa^es  of  the  magazine.  Of  course  I  cannot  copy 
it  here.  It  is  worthy  only  of  a  Littledale  or  a  ritualistic  Vicar. 
It  is  simply  a  rechauffe  of  all  the  threadbare  sophisms,  the 
hundredth-time  refuted  calumnies  and  the  stale  misrepresenta- 
tions which  have  been  the  stock-in-trade  of  Protestantism  since 
it  has  existed.  The  bishop  is  made  to  repudiate  even  St. 
Peters  Primacy,  and  to  doubt  that  St.  Peter  ever  was  at  Rome 
— facts  admitted  even  by  "Janus"  and  "  Quirinus."  But  that 
your  readers  may  be  able  to  form  some  judgment  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  ideas  imputed  to  a  Catholic  bishop  in  the  "  speech," 
I  give  the  closing  words : 

' '  Ah  !  if  he  who  reigns  above  us  wishes  to  punish  us,  make  his 
band  fall  heavy  on  us,  as  he  did  to  Pharaoh,  he  has  no  need  to 
permit  Garibaldi's  soldiers  to  drive  us  away  from  the  Eternal  City. 
He  has  only  to  let  them  make  Pius  IX.  a  god,  as  we  have  made  a 


A    RWOINDER.  129 

goddess  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  (Tlie  iUilics  are  the  Vicar's— tliey 
are  not  in  the  orijfinul  tract.)  Stop,  stoj),  voncnibk'^  l>rothreii,  on  the 
odious  and  ridiculous  incline  on  which  you  have  placed  youi-selves: 
save  the  church  from  the  shipwreck  whicli  threatens  her,  asking 
from  the  Holy  Scriptures  alone  for  the  rule  of  faith  which  ice 
ought  to  believe  and  prof  ess." 

The  italics  are  juine. 

I  remark  on  this  "  speech  "  as  follows :  Bishop  Strossmayer  ^ 
is  to-day,  and  has  always  been,  one  of  the  most  illustrious 
Bishops  in  the  church,  and  a  few  years  ago  was  liighly  honored 
at  Rome  in  being  made  by  Leo  XIII.  an  "Assistant  at  the 
Pontiiical  Throne."  I  have  pronounced  the  speech  a  ridiculous 
forgery,  llow  do  I  prove  it?  I  am  aware  that  it  is  as  easy  to 
close  the  eyes  of  the  understanding  as  to  close  the  eyes  of  the 
body.  And  yet  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that,  relying  alone  on 
the  intrinsic  evidence  furnished  by  the  "speech"  itself,  no  in- 
telligent Protestant,  with  any  knowledge  of  Catholic  principles, 
could  for  a  moment  be  deceived  by  it.  Years  ago  I  submitted 
it  to  several  Protestant  legal  friends,  with  no  extrinsic  evidence 
beyond  the  fact  of  Bishop  Strossmayer's  present  position  in 
the  church,  and  they  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  their  belief 
that  it  was  a  forgery.  Can  a?iy  one  believe  that  a  Catholic 
Bishop  ever  uttered  the  closing  words — that  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures alone  are  the  rule  of  faith  in  the  Catholic  Church  ?  Why, 
even  a  Ritualist  would  anathematize  such  a  heresy  as  that. 
Pusey  and  Littledale,  with  all  their  vagaries,  certainly  would. 

But  the  extrinsic  evidence  leaves  no  doubt  about  the  matter. 
The  English  translator  of  "Quirinus"  exposes  the  fraud,  and 
remember,  the  Vicar  has  this  whole  book  in  his  possession,  as 
his  above  letter  admits.  Again,  the  editor  of  the  Church.  Ec- 
lectic in  the  "  Home  Summary  "  of  the  magazine,  discusses  the 
Tract  sent  him  by  the  Vicar,  and  then  adds :  "  Since  writing 
the  above  we  have  been  informed  by  another  correspondent 
that  the  speech  was  not  Strossmayer's,  but  was  made  up  very 
ingeniously  by  a  certain  journalist  (name  not  given)  out  of  the 
'  leakages '  of  the  council  as  they  were  reported  about  Rome." 
But  the  best  evidence  of  all  is  Bishop  Strossmayer's  own  denial 
and  repudiation  of  the  scandalous  forgery.    Fortunately  he  was 


130  Il'SE,    Il'riA,    IpSL'M. 

alive  to  answer  his  calumniators.  He  published  his  denial  in 
the  leading;  papers  of  all  the  capitals  of  Europe  when  the 
forgery  was  first  put  into  circulation  in  1872.  This  was  copied 
into  the  English  papers,  and  among  them  was  the  London 
Tablet.  I  had  the  Bishop's  letter  thirteen  years  mjo,  but  lost 
it  with  my  library  in  our  great  fire.  Fortunately  my  loss  is 
made  good  by  Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  (1S70),  which  brands  the 
calumny,  like  the  mark  of  Cain,  on  the  forehead  of  the  crim- 
inal. The  Vicar  (pioted  from  Appleton  in  his  "  Strictures." 
I  quote  from  Vol.  xv.,  p.  42G :  "  Strosamayer  ....  was 
represented  as  having  delivered  a  violent  opposition  speech  in 
one  of  the  sessions,  the  text  of  which  was  reproduced  by  several 
journals;  but  in  1872  he  addressed  a  letter  to  i\\G  Franca  is 
denying  the  authenticity  of  the  speech  and  affirming  that  he 
^  never  said  oneicord  during  the  entire  council  ivhich  could  in 
any  way  diminish  the  authority  of  the  Holy  See,  or  tend  to 
jpromote  discord  iii  the  Church.^  In  1875  ho  jmblished  a 
])astoral  letter  on  the  occasion  of  his  25th  anniversary  as  a 
Bishop,  declining  a  public  manifestation  in  his  honor  '  while  Ins 
fellow-countrymen  of  the  Croats  across  the  frontier  are  shed- 
ding their  blood  for  liberty,  and  Christian  charity  makes  it  a 
duty  to  aid  the  widows  and  orphans  of  the  fallen.'  "  In  pres- 
ence of  these  facts  I  do  not  trust  myself  to  express  my  abhor- 
rence of  an  impostor  so  ntterly  ''gangrened"  with  malice. 
Sixteen  years  ago  Bishop  Strossmayer  denied  the  calumny  and 
publiidied  it  to  all  the  world.  Three  years  ago  the  Vicar  un- 
earthed the  covpse,  re-baptized  it  with  ritualistic  "  bell,  book 
and  candle  "  accompaniments  and  introduced  it  to  readers  who 
never  before  had  heard  of  it.  The  editor  of  the  Eclectic  re- 
minded him  that  it  was  not  Strossmayer's,  the  translator  of 
"Quirinus"  exposes  the  fraud,  and  "Appleton"  clinches  the 
whole  matter  with  the  Bishop's  own  words.  And  yet  no  word 
of  regret  or  apology  has  ever  appeared  from  the  Vicar  to  atone, 
if  possible,  for  the  heinous  offence  against  the  slandered  Bishop. 
The  calumny  stands  in  letters  of  blood  in  the  pages  of  the 
Church  Eclectic  and  undimmed  by  a  repentant  tear.  Bellar- 
mine,  he  says,  "deemed  a  flagrant  lie  a  mere  pious  fraud, 
when  the  credit  and  position  of  the  papacy  were  at  stake,"  and 


A  Rkjoinoek.  131 

he  consigns  him  to  tlie  '*  hurning  hike."  The  Vicar  himself 
tliinks  it  "advantageous  to  our  church"  to  circulate  a  vile 
forgery,  and  expects  to  be  canonised!  Surely  ingenuous  minds 
in  this  comnumity  ought  at  once  to  he  aroused  to  a  suspicion 
of  tlic  true  ciiaracter  of  a  man  whose  venomous  tooth  spares 
nor  living  nor  dead. 

P.S. — "  Caution." — Such  is  the  caption  of  the  Vicar's  latest 
olTusioii.  It  reminded  me,  at  first  blush,  of  a  patent  medicine 
advertisement.  And  it  is  worth  about  as  much.  It  indicates 
feverishness,  however.  I  wundei  what  sort  of  nerve-food  does 
he  use! 

Short  as  is  his  letter  it  is  full  of  impudent  falsehoods,  the 
result  of  deliberation  or  stujndity  or  both.  His  oft-time  imbe- 
cility is  fast  dowering  into  downright  wickedness.  Patience 
with  such  a  man  can  only  stretch  to  siuipping  pohit.  Now 
mark  carefully.  There  are  three  Homilies  on  the  r)lessed 
Virgin  attributed  (let  me  say  so  as  not  to  seem  to  beg  the 
question)  to  St.  Gregory  Thaumaturgus.  In  the  3d  last  para- 
graph of  my  second  last  letter  I  give  short  selections  from  the 
three.     I  then  say  : 

"  It  is  my  duty  here  to  i-emind  your  readers  that  doubt  lias  been 
cast  on  the  authorship  of  tliese  Homilies.  Cardinal  Bellarnnne  and 
Dupin  doubted  about  them,  but  I  must  also  add  that  the  critics  are 
ten  to  one  agabist  them  (Bellarniine  and  Dupin)  uicluding  the 
learned  Protestant,  Gerard  Voss.  For  us  the  question  is  conqiara- 
tively  unimportant ;  for  everything  conspires  to  assign  them  an  early 
date,  and  moreover  I  am  not  at  present  seeking  to  prove  a  doctrine 
by  the  weight  of  great  names,  but  to  discover  tlie  general  mind  of 
the  early  church  respecting  the  Mother  of  God.  And  thcrefoi'c 
whether  these  Homilies  were  preached  by  the  illustrious  Bishop  of 
Neo-Ca'sarea,  or  by  Saint  Chrysostom,  or  by  Macarius  of  Philadel- 
phia, is  comparatively  of  small  importance." 

These  were  my  words  touching  all  three  Homilies,  as  your 
readers  plainly  see. 

The  quotation  in  my  last  letter  closing  the  Third  Century  is 
taken  from  the  second  Homily.  And  yet  the  Vicar  impu- 
dently and  falsely  says  that  I  gave  my  quotation  "  without 
even  a  hint  as  to  its  character" — when  I  had  just  told  all  about 


132  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

the  Homilies  fairly  and  fearlessly.  Evidently  he  1ms  read  my 
letters  hackwards  as  he  read  the  Fathers  during  his  famous 
"  six  weeks' "  incubation.  What  can  an  honest  debater  do  with 
snch  a  contemptible  opponent  ? 

But  is  there  any  doubt  about  the  authorship  of  these  Homi- 
lies ?  Practically  none.  Voss,  the  learned  Protestant  philol- 
ogist, discovered  them  in  a  most  ancient  MS.  of  Grotto  Fer- 
rata,  a  convent  of  the  Greek  Benedictines  near  Rome ;  and, 
having  collated  them  himself  with  other  Codices  in  the  Vatican 
and  Sirlctan  Libraries,  he  published  them  with  the  other  works 
of  St.  Gregory,  Leo  Allatius,  Theophilus  Raynaud,  Honoratus 
a  S.  Maria,  and  Piazza  assign  them  to  St.  Gregory.  These 
are  the  great  authorities  on  the  matter.  Bellarmine  doubted 
the  aiithorshfj)  only,  but  the  Vicar  would  not  "  believe  him  on 
his  oath,"  so  he  is  dismissed.  Piazza  examined  and  utterly  re- 
futed Dupin's  arguments,  so  that  nothing  is  left  to  cause  anv 
doubt.  Montfaucon  savs  he  found  09U'  of  the  homilies  some- 
times  attril)uted  to  St.  Gregory,  sometimes  to  St.  Chrysostom, 
sometimes  to  Macarius  of  Philadelphia.  Either  of  the  latter  is 
as  good  as  St.  Gregory  as  to  time  and  authority.  This  is  their 
whole  critical  history.  What  diiference  does  it  make  how  an 
English  Protestant  translator  classifies  them  ?  His  translation, 
as  an  authority,  derives  all  its  value  from  the  originals.  It  is 
worth  neither  more  nor  less.  What  does  he  know  about  them 
anyway  except  in  so  far  as  ho  learns  from  the  critics  and 
scholars  whose  names  I  have  given  above  ?  Why,  the  very 
translation  in  Clarh  is  from  the  text  of  Voss,  the  great  editor 
of  St.  Gregor}',  who,  as  I  have  said,  assigns  them  all  to  him. 
The  Vicar  evidently  did  not  know  anything  about  Voss.  He 
says  the  church  (what  church,  pray  ?)  has  for  centuries  been 
deceived  by  these  "  Dubious  and  Spurious"  writings  of  St. 
Gregory,  and  that  they  are  very  copious !  May  God  pity  him ! 
I  now  believe  he  would  deny  the  genuineness  of  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures themselves  to  get  himself  out  of  the  miserable  scrape  his 
pitiable  vanity  led  him  into — his  itch  to  "give  informa- 
tion "  and  to  "  instruct  Biblical  students  "  on  subjects  of  which 
he  is  as  ignorant  as  a  sucking  dove.  The  copiousness  he 
speaks  of  amounts  to  T4  pages  1     He  is  not  quite  satisfied  with 


A  Rejoinder.  133 

"Clark's  Ante-Nicene  Library,"  and  refers  to  Smith  and 
Wace's  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography — learning  made 
easy.  Not  bad  for  Oxford !  Better  go  to  "  Comic  Black- 
stone."  But  as  he  has  told  us  "  tliere  are  lawyers  and  law- 
yers," so  also,  I  suppose,  are  there  theologians  «wc?  theologians ! ' 
Great  Heaven !  I  myself  fearlessly  raised  the  question  of 
the  authenticity  of  the  Homilies,  which  I  quote,  of  St.  Greg- 
ory, I  give  the  names  of  the  greatest  critics /(/-o  and  con,  with 
a  result  that  leaves  no  reasonable  doubt.  But  no  reason  or 
authority  can  pierce  the  coat  of  malice  worn  by  this  scrap-book 
theologian  of  Oxford.  He  says  I  gave  no  hint  even  of  their 
character,  he  pronounces  them  "  undoubtedly  spurious,"  and 
like  a  veritable  coward  retires  behind  a  reference  to  a  penny 
"  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography."     0  seri  stvdiorum  ! 

"  Most  of  (my)  citations  are  eqiially  misleading,"  he  says. 
Goodl  This  is  indeed  a  compliment  in  disguise.  Thanks! 
Your  readers  will  not  forget  Prudentius,  Bishop  Strossmayer, 
and  St.  Gregory  Thaumaturgus. 

If  you  will  pardon  my  saying  so,  Mr.  Editor,  I  think  it  a 
mercy  to  the  Vicar  to  prohibit  his  hysterical  interjections  dur- 
ing my  Rejoinder.  It  is  hardly  fair  to  tempt  him  between 
the  upper  and  nether  mill  stone.  Besides,  he  will  have  lots  of 
time  "  before  Lent  sets  in." 

R.  F.  Q. 


LETTER  YIII. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Glohe : 

Sir, — In  my  last  letter  I  put  in  blazing  light  the  detestable 
character,  mental  and  moral,  of  the  Vicar  as  an  anti-Catholic 
controversialist.  Theretofore  I  had  fully  proved  not  only  how 
variotis  the  reading  of  our  text  is,  but  also  that  it  made  no  dif- 
ference to  Catholic  doctrine  on  the  Blessed  Virgin  whether  we 
read  in  Gen.  iii.  15 — Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum,  llle,  Illi,  Ilic,  Ilaec, 


134  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

Hoc  —  all  which  are  to  be  found  in  this  place.  To  the 
second  branch  of  this  case  I  will  devote,  for  the  most  part, 
what  I  have  to  say.  I  would  gladly  stop  here  because  of  other 
pressing  duties,  but  I  owe  it  to  truth  and  to  charity  to  make 
the  religion  I  profess  known  as  it  really  is  in  this  particular, 
and  to  vindicate  it,  as  well  as  I  can,  against  the  gross  calum- 
nies and  misrepresentations  of  my  opponents. 

To  premise :  It  is  the  unhappiness  of  my  position  now  that 
I  am  compelled  to  join  issue  with  the  Vicar  in  detail 
rather  than  on  principle.  He  has  no  religious  principle. 
He  is  "neither  fish,  flesh,  fowl,  nor  yet  good  red 
herring."  He  is  a  sort  of  theological  hermaphrodite  and 
hybrid.  For  instance :  He  is  licensed  by  the  Bishop  of  his 
diocese ;  he  lives  and  oificiates  within  the  limits  of  the  St. 
John  Anglican  Deanery,  and  yet  he  has  not  hitherto  dared, 
because  he  would  not  be  allowed,  to  attend  the  meetings  of  the 
Deanery.  He  professes  to  belong  to  the  Church  of  England. 
He  is  no  Protestant — only  a  "true  catholic,"  you  knowl 
And  yet  he  puts  himself  forward  as  the  spokesman  of  Angli- 
canism. All  right.  Let  me  here  only  remind  my  "  dissent- 
ing Protestant "  friends  that  I  am  to  deal  with  this  Proteus 
just  as  liis  theological  kaleidoscope  presents  him.  They  will 
the  better  be  able  to  gauge  the  depth  of  his  sympathy  for 
them  in  their  loss  of  "  apostolic  "  Christianity  and  "  the  minis- 
try and  sacraments  of  the  church." 

In  his  third  letter  the  Vicar  says :  "  It  is  an  imheard  of  doc- 
trine which  asserts  that  Christ  put  forward  His  mother  and 
helped  her  as  our  champion  to  overthrow  the  devil."  Pre- 
cisely !  But  in  the  paragraph  preceding  he  uttered  a  malicious 
calumny  against  the  Catholic  church  by  charging  this  mon- 
strous doctrine  to  her ;  whereas  if  any  such  exists  among  per- 
sons claiming  the  Christian  name,  it  cannot  probably  be  found 
anywhere  outside  of  such  an  ecclesiastical  bedlam  as  Anglican- 
ism. Pusey  says :  Even  Mohammedanism^  as  a  (jreat  heresy, 
has  retained  more  fragments  of  truth  than  m,\ich  of  this  so- 
called  modern  Christianity  of  the  Church  of  Englaiid.  The 
Catholic  doctrine  is  that  Jesus  Christ  by  His  Passion,  Death, 
and  glorious  Resurrection  is  our  only  champion  of  Redemp- 


A  Rejoinder.  135 

tion  from  the  devil — and  all  his  aiders  and  abettors,  no  matter 
how  loudly  they  may  cry  out,  "  Lord !  Lord  ! " 

Again  he  says :  "  That  she  has  overcome  Satan  as  one  of 
Chi'isfs  redeemed  in  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  none  ever 
doubted."  What  is  he  prating  about  then  \  Over  and  over 
again  I  stated  this  to  be  the  meaning  of  our  reading  of  the 
words,  '■'■Ipsa  conteret  caput  tuum — She  shall  bruise  thy  head^'' 
— and  I  quoted  from  the  Bull  Ineffah'dis  that  the  Blessed  Vir- 
gin crushed  the  serpent's  head  "  hy  that  virtue  with  which  she 
was  endued  from  on  high."  All  the  great  Catholic  theologians 
cited  by  me  were  to  the  same  effect.  Let  me  add  here  the  au- 
thority of  an  old  French  Catholic  Bible  (1748),  with  the  cele- 
brated Calmet's  commentary,  where  the  explanation  is  actually 
given  in  the  text :  "  Je  mettrai  une  inimitie  eternelle  entre  toi 
et  la  femme,  entre  sa  race  et  la  tienne  ;  elle  te  brisera  la  tete 
{par  le  sauveur  qui  naiti^a  d'elle)  et  tu  tacheras  de  la  mordre 
par  le  talon" — Translated: — "I  will  put  an  eternal  enmity 
between  thee  and  the  woman,  between  thy  seed  and  hers  ;  She 
shall  bruise  thy  head  {by  the  Saviour  who  will  be  born  fronri, 
her),  &c." 

Again  he  writes :  "  The  modern  Roman  Church,  it  seems  to 
me,  in  her  efforts  to  exalt  the  Blessed  Virgin  has  overlooked 
the  fact  so  admirably  expressed  by  St.  Augustine,  that '  though 
the  Virgin  was  Christ's  mother  in  the  flesh.  She  was  born  of 
Christ  after  the  spirit ;  forasmuch  as  all  who  have  believed  m 
Him,  among  whom  is  herself  also,  are  rightly  called  the  chil- 
dren of  the  Bridegroom.'  "  "  The  modern  Roman  Church  " 
forsooth !  Am  I  really  talking  to  a  blind  man  about  colors  ? 
Why,  St.  Augustine's  words  are  simply  a  paraphrase  of  Mary's 
own  sublime  outburst  of  inspiration :  "  My  soul  doth  magnify 
the  Lord  and  my  spirit  hath  rejoiced  in  Go.1,  My  Saviour." 
The  saint  was  a  Bishop  of  this  same  "  Roman  Church  "  and  no 
Anglo-ritualist  I  ween.  He  got  his  doctrine  from  her  as  he 
himself  so  well  expresses  it :  "I  should  not  believe  the  Gospels 
unless  the  authority  of  the  church  moved  me  thereto."  Let  me 
commend  to  the  Vicar's  meditation  another  passage  from  the 
great  "  Doctor  of  Grace  "  on  Mary's  dignity  as  he  conceived 
it: 


136  Ii'SE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

"Except,  therefore,  the  Holy  Virgin  Mary,  about  whom,  on  ac- 
count of  the  honor  of  the  Lord,  I  will  not  allow  the  question  to  be 
entertained  when  sins  are  under  discussion;  for  how  do  we  know 
what  increase  of  grace  was  bestowed  on  her  to  enable  her  to  over- 
come sin  in  every  way,  who  merited  to  conceive  and  bring  forth 
Him  who,  as  is  plain,  had  no  sin ;  with  the  exception,  therefore,  of 
this  Virgin,  if  we  could  gather  together  all  those  male  and  female 
saints,  while  they  were  living  here  below,  and  could  ask  them 
whether  they  were  without  sin — what  answer  do  we  think  that  they 
would  give  ? " 


Did  St.  Augustine  think  that  any  other  "  eminent  female 
saint "  could  illustrate,  so  well  as  Mary,  the  triumph  of  God's 
grace  in  the  crushing  of  the  serpent  ? 

Once  more,  the  Vicar  says:  "To  make  the  woman  the 
champion  of  the  race  is  to  distort  all  Scripture."  Yes,  and  to 
wickedly  and  scandalously  and  maliciously  assert  as  he  does  over 
and  over  again  that  the  Catholic  Church  does  so  is  to  run  the 
risk  of  incurring  the  penalties  pronounced  in  Scripture  against 
"  liars,"  "  slanderers  "  and  "  calumniators  " — a  place  in  "  the 
burning  lake."  So  much  have  I  felt  bound  to  say  in  reply  to 
the  "  champion  "  calumny.  The  Vicar  writhes  and  wallows  in 
its  very  shme  to  the  end  of  his  "  strictures."  Your  readers 
can  apply  the  answer  where  required. 

He  next  flies  off  to  Papal  infallibility  and  the  False  Decretals. 
We  are  not  discussing  these  subjects  now.  One  thing  at  a  time 
if  it  so  please  him.  Those  of  your  readers  interested  in  the 
"False  Decretals,"  so  called,  can  satisfy  themselves  by  studying 
what  distinguished  Protestant  writers  have  said  about  them — 
Guizot,  Ranke,  Vogt  and  others.  The  silly  slanders  of  "  Janus  " 
and  Littledale  they  will  find  answered  in  "  Anti-Janus,"  by 
Cardinal  Hergenrother,  and  in  Father  Ryder's  "  Catholic  Con- 
troversy," a  reply  to  Littledale's  "  Plain  Reasons,"  of  which 
book  I  will  speak  later.  Papal  infallibility  is  a  terrible  bugbear 
to  the  Vicar,  and  naturally  so — it  interferes  with  his  own  self- 
assumed  prerogjitive.  However,  that  question  is  not  now 
before  the  court.  It  is  true  that  schisms  of  all  kinds  were 
prophesied  to  follow  its  definition  by  the  Vatican  Council. 
The  great  theological  windbags  of  Germany  and  England  have 


A  Rejoinder.  137 

had  time  to  exhaust  all  the  resources  of  their  "  scieutilic  his- 
tory," their  "  liberal  theology,"  their  "  higher  criticism  "  and 
their  "  deeper  views  " — to  shoot  their  last  brittle  sophism  against 
the  Everlasting  Rock,  to  spit  at  it  their  last  envenomed  lie ; 
and  yet  from  the  summit  to  the  base  of  that  Rock  there  is 
neither  chasm  nor  mark  of  chasm.  Through  all  the  Catholic 
Church  there  is  Unity  of  Faith — unity  perfect  and  undestructi- 
ble — as  has  been  ever,  as  shall  be  ever,  all  days  even  to  the  con- 
summation of  the  world.  Every  day,  from  every  clime,  one 
glorious  Credo  arises  to  the  throne  of  God,  harnionious  as  the 
chant  sent  forth  from  all  creation,  in  the  first  exulting  dawn  of 
its  being,  "  when  the  morning  stars  praised  Me  together,  and 
all  the  sons  of  God  made  a  joyful  melody."  Aye,  there  she 
goes,  that  tiny  ship  of  Peter's,  with  a  Leo  at  her  helm : 

Blow  fair  thou  breeze !    She  anchors  ere  the  dark. 

Already  doubled  is  the  cape — our  bay 

Receives  that  prow  which  pi-oudly  spurns  the  spray. 

How  gloriously  lier  gallant  coui-se  she  goes ! 

Her  white  wings  flying — never  from  her  foes — 

She  walks  the  „aters  like  a  thing  of  life, 

And  seems  to  dai-e  the  elements  to  strife. 

A  few  other  points  in  this  letter  I  will  notice  later  on. 

Fourth  Leti'er.  There  is  absolutely  nothing  in  this  ad  reyn, 
beyond  the  veriest  "  balderdash  "  (his  own  term)  and  rubbish, 
that  I  have  not  already  disposed  of.  I  notice,  however,  that 
he  recommends  "  every  student  of  Church  history  "  to  get  a 
copy  of  "  Janus,"  while  not  a  word  is  said  about  tlie  learned 
reply  to  it  entitled  '"Anti-Janus."  Of  course,  the  Vicar  never 
read  it  because  Littledale,  to  whom  he  is  a  mere  bob-tail,  does 
not  mention  it  in  his  list  of  "  Books  on  the  Roman  Controversy." 

I  cannot  allow  his  slander  on  the  memory  of  "  the  Saintly 
Pere  Gratry,"  as  the  Yicar  so  justly  calls  him,  to  pass  uimoticed. 
He  appears  to  have  three  letters  written  by  Gratry  to  Bishop 
Deschamps  at  the  time  of  the  Vatican  Council.  Littledale 
has  them  "  on  his  list."  Doubtless  they  are  the  only  writings 
of  this  great  author  and  French  academician  the  Vicar  has  ever 
read.  He  quotes  from  them  two  sentences,  which  as  they  stand 
are  utterly  meaningless ;  but  they  sound  well  and  that  is  all  he 


188  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

requires.  Now,  in  the  whole  history  of  literature,  I  know  of 
no  misapprehension  by  a  learned  man  so  inexplicable  as  that 
by  Ptire  Gratry,  of  the  question  he  discussed.  Ah !  yes,  but 
he  was  an  honest  man  and  publicly  confessed  his  mistake  and 
corrected  his  error.  Here  are  his  words  in  a  letter  to  one  o*" 
his  fellow  academicians  after  the  definition  of  Papal  Infalli- 
bility by  the  Vatican  Council :  "  I  do  not  wish  to  enter  upon 
theological  ground,  but  I  would  just  observe  that  I  have  with- 
stood the  doctrine  of  inspired  infallibility,  and  this  the  Council 
rejects.  I  have  fought  against  the  doctrine  of  personal  infal- 
libility— the   Council   decrees  official  infallibility I 

dreaded  something  like  a  scientific,  political,  or  governing  in- 
fallibility, but  the  Council  decrees  only  that  which  is  doctrinal. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  I  am  free  of  error  in  my  polemical 
views.  I  have  made  many  7nistal'es  in  this,  hut,  at  least,  Iain 
ready  to  htimhle  myself  wherein  I  have  erred.^''  Translated 
from  "  Les  derniers  jours  de  Pere  Gratry,  par  Pere  Perraud  " 
now  a  Bishop  and  member  of  the  French  Academy.  But  then 
you  know  Gratry  "  had  to  swallow  the  new  dogma  at  the  point 
of  an  Anathema"  !  I  do  not  know  that  he  built  any  "stately 
cathedral  in  reparation  for  his  impertinent "  letters.  Perhaps 
the  Vicar  would  inform  us. 

A  very  funny  thing  about  a  ritualistic  "  priest "  is  the  way 
he  patronizes  revolt  against  church  authority.  To  his  mind  it 
always  implies,  at  all  events,  the  presence  of  great  mwal  and 
intellectual  power.  Gratry,  for  instance,  is  called  "  saintly  " 
because  of  his  three  ephemeral  letters,  and  Dollinger  is  a 
*'  learned  church  historian  and  theologian  "  because  "  it  is  sui> 
posed  "  he  wrote  Janus — a  statement,  by  the  way,  for  which 
the  Vicar  has  not  a  particle  of  evidence  beyond  Littledale's 
assertion  which  is  not  true.  Has  Dollinger,  I  wonder,  become 
a  ritualist?  From  being  a  "papist"  has  he  fallen  up  to  the 
dignity  of  an — "  apist." 

Fifth  Letter.  This  is  the  offspring  of  the  famous  "  six 
weeks  "  i ncubation.  It  simply  reeks  with  the  infamous  cahimny, 
already  repeatedly  exposed,  that  Mary  ever  blessed,  is  the 
"  Champion  of  the  human  race  "  according  to  Catholic  teach- 
ing.    As  it  is  based  on  that  and  has  no  significance  without  it. 


A  Rejoinder.  13& 

I  might  pass  it  by  unnoticed,  more  especially,  too,  since  it  is 
foreign  to  the  points  at  issue.  But  his  iniijuities  are  now  sa 
great  that  I  cannot  allow  even  a  lack  of  logic  to  save  him. 

He  quotes  passages  from  the  Fathers  which  assert  that  God 
alone  is  to  be  adored,  that  Christ  is  the  One  Mediator  between 
God  and  man,  and  that  all  our  trust  is  to  be  reposed  in  Him 
alone.  This  he  says  contradicts  the  "  Roman  doctrine  "  on  the 
Blessed  Virgin ! 

Now,  I  fear  this  argument  proves  too  much  for  the  Yicar, 
because  it  goes  towards  demonstrating  that  St.  Liguori  himself 
did  not  admit  the  Roman  doctrine.  And  as  I  am  most  heartily 
willing  to  accept  the  strongest  language  he  has  quoted  from  the 
Fathei-s,  or  which  they  have  ever  used  on  the  subject,  it  proves 
that  /  also  reject  the  Roman  doctrine.  Yet,  if  this  conclusion 
is  false,  how  can  the  premises  be  true  ?  Let  us  look  at  the 
argument. 

Major  premiss :  "  No  one  who  saj's  that  all  his  hope  is  in 
Christ  can  admit  the  'Roman  doctrine '  on  the  Blessed  Virgin." 

Minor  premiss :  "  But  the  Fathers  quoted  by  the  Vicar  say 
this."     Therefore  they  do  not  admit  the  "  Roman  doctrine." 

The  Vicar  has  proved  the  minor  premiss,  which  no  Catholic 
ever  dreamed  of  denying ;  when  has  he  or  any  of  the  brood 
of  Littledale  &  Co.  condescended  to  prove  the  major,  the  very 
subject,  be  it  observed,  that  he  has  introduced  into  this  discus- 
sion ?    Noxohere ! 

I  can,  however,  prove  the  truth  of  the  contrary  proposition, 
by  referring  to  any  of  our  devotional  writers.  I  open  at  ran- 
dom the  "  Soliloquy  of  the  Soul "  by  Thomas  i.  Kempis.  He 
says  of  our  Lord  : 

"  He  it  is  who  made  and  redeemed  thee;  who  labored  and  strove 
and  overcame  for  thee.  He  is  thine  Advocate,  and  the  propitiation 
for  thy  sins.  He  is  thy  Comforter,  thy  Guide,  and  Guardian.  He 
is  tliine  only  One,  thy  beloved  One,  '  who  feedetli  among  the  hlies' 
and  who  longeth  to  rest  upon  thy  breasts.  Whether  thou  art  in 
sadness  or  in  joy,  ever  have  recourse  unto  Him ;  for  He  is  the  mirror 
of  holy  hfe,  and  the  model  of  justice.  He  is  the  never-failing  light 
of  the  soul,  the  lover  of  chastity,  and  the  joy  of  the  conscience. 
....  To  Him,  above  all,  should  every  intention,  every  action, 
speech,  reading,  prayer,  meditation,  and  speculation  be  directed. 


140  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Through  Him  salvation  is  given  unto  thee  and  life  eternal  is  pre- 
pared for  thee. " 

And  again,  a  few  pages  fartlier  on  : 

"For  I  know  that  my  life  and  convei-sation  is  not  such,  as  I  may 
dare  to  put  any  trust  in  myself ;  but  this  is  my  hope  and  my  con 
solation,  to  place  my  trust  and  my  rest  in  the  price  of  Thy 
precious  Blood,  in  which  I  place  my  whole  repose." 

Your  Catholic  readers  will  probably  be  astounded  at  the  in- 
formation the  Yiear  has  put  together  as  passages  from  the 
Fathers,  containing  the  above  doctrine  as  decisive  proof  against 
ais.  Why !  we  are  bound  by  the  Vatican  Council  to  say  anath- 
ema to  whosoever  will  not  receive  this  doctrine. 

But  I  forget  myself.  The  question  is,  whether  Thomas  d 
Kempis,  after  using  the  language  just  quoted,  could  honor  the 
Blessed  Virgin  in  the  "  Roman  "  fashion.  I  turn  a  few  pages 
and  find  these  words  addressed  to  our  Lady : 

"  Do  thou,  O  most  pious  mother,  vouchsafe  to  look  upon  my  little- 
ness, for  thou  canst  assist  me  in  many  ways,  and  warm  my  heart 
"with  plentiful  consolation  amidst  my  afflictions.  When,  then,  I  am 
girt  about  with  afflictions  or  temptations,  I  will  presently  without 
dread  have  recourse  unto  thee,  because  mercy  is  there  more  ready 
where  greater  grace  abounds." 

This,  I  suppose,  the  Vicar  will  allow  to  be  "  Roman  doc-' 
trine."  And  if  so,  it  is  clear  that  persons  holding  the 
Roman  doctrine  may  still  use  the  language  of  the  Fathers 
respecting  our  Divine  Lord.  But  it  may  be  supposed,  rather 
he  charges  it  against  us,  that  we  have  left  off  using  this  lan- 
guage. Let  liim  open  a  very  common  Prayer  Book,  the 
Garden  of  the  Soul.     He  will  find  there  that — 

"We  must  believe  that  neither  mercy,  nor  grace,  nor  salvation, 
either  can  or  ever  could,  since  Adam's  fall,  be  obtained  any  other- 
wise than  through  the  death  and  passion  of  the  Son  of  God." 

Or  again,  look  at  anotlier  common  book  amongst  us,  the 
Manual  of  Devotion.    He  will  find  that— 

"The  Church  of  GJod  teaches  us  to  put  our  whole  confidence  in 
the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ.    He  is  our  only  Saviour,  the  One  Media- 


A  Eejoinder.  141 

tor  between  God  and  man,  as  the  apostle  tells  us.  It  is  in  His  life- 
giving  Blood  alone  that  we  can  hope  for  mercy  and  grace  and 
salvation." 

But  what  about  "  St.  Liguori  "  and  "  The  Raccolta  "  ?  Well, 
in  the  Saint's  address  to  the  reader  of  "  The  Glories  of  Mary,^^ 
he  says:  Our  Divine  Lord  "  offered  and  paid  the  superabun- 
dant ransom  of  His  precious  Blood,  in  which  alone  is  our  saJva- 
tiofi,  life  and  resurrection^  The  italics  are  the  Saint's.  Again, ' 
the  Raccolta  has :  "  O,  most  compassionate  Jesus !  Thou  alone 
art  our  salvation,  our  life,  and  our  resurrection." 

But  tliis  elementary  doctrine  of  Cliristianity  is  the  underly- 
ing idea,  the  very  quintessence  of  every  prayer  in  both  these 
favorite  books  of  the  Vicar's,  whether  addressed  to  the  Blessiid 
Virgin  or  to  any  other  saint.  The  Vicar  may  not  understand 
this ;  but  then  he  ought  not,  for  simple  decency's  sake,  to  say 
nothing  of  self-respect,  call  himself  a  "true  Catholic."  "Oh, 
Heavens,"  exclaims  Carlyle,  as  he  glances  with  a  kind  of  repug- 
nance at  the  newest  sub-sect,  "  what  shall  we  say  of  Puseyisni 
(another  Jiame  for  Ritualism)  in  comparison  to  Twclftli-Cen- 
tury  Catholicism  ?  Little  or  nothing,  for  indeed  it  is  a  matter 
to  strike  one  dumb." 

Is  it  not,  then,  a  wretched  mockery,  and  does  it  not  betray 
the  most  disgraceful  ignorance  of  Catholic  belief,  to  quote  pas- 
sages from  the  Fathers,  not  one  whit  stronger  than  those  from 
St.  Liguori  and  the  Raccolta  alone,  and  tlience  to  argue  the 
diversity  of  belief  between  the  Ancient  and  "  Modern  Roman 
Church"? 


LETTER  IX. 

IPSE,    IPSA,   IP8UM — A   EEJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — This  is  not  the  time  to  discuss  the  question  at  all  fully, 
but  is  it  true,  as  the  Vicar  asserts,  that  the  Fathers  knew  nothing 
of  the  intercession  and  invocation  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  ?    A 


I;i2  Ii'SK,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

more  contemptible  faloehood  was  never  penned !  To  the 
Fathers  he  has  appealed,  and  to  the  Fathers  he  must  go. 
"  Antiquity  "  and  "  the  Primitive  Church  "  is  the  great  hobby 
of  Ritualists — at  least  so  they  say.  Let  us  see  what  support 
they  get  in  that  quarter.  The  Vicar  allows  the  Blessed  Mary 
to  be  one  of  the  Saints — "  the  Chief  of  Saints,"  in  his  own 
words.  Was  this  a  slip  of  the  pen?  I  say  that  the  Fathers 
certainly  believed  in  the  intercession  and  invocation  of  the 
Saints,  and  I  will  prove  it  by  Protestant  authorities  alone. 
Here  I  must  compress.  Daille,  v»'hose  knowledge  of  the 
Fathers  was  not  the  result  of  "  six  weeks'  "  study  of  "  copious 
indices,"  declares  that  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen  was  infected 
with  the  superstitions  of  his  day  on  that  subject.  Le  Clerc 
says  the  same  thing,  and  is  fully  satisfied  with  the  al)surdity  of 
those  Protestants  who  claim  the  Nicene  Fathers  as  being  on 
their  side.  Larduer  will  tell  the  Yicar  the  same  thing.  Isaac 
Taylor,  like  a  rational  Protestant,  has  written  an  elaborate  work 
to  show  that  the  Xicene  Church  was  even  more  corrupt  than 
the  present  "Roman  Church."  Middleton  looks  upon  the 
Church  of  the  Fourth  Century  as  in  a  state  of  modified  pagan- 
ism, because  of  the  same  superstitions  practices.  Take  again 
the  historians.  Milner  seems  to  date  "popery"  at  least  from 
the  time  of  St.  Cyprian.  Mosheim  speaks  of  the  corniptions 
in  the  same  direction,  which  a  superstitious  zeal  had  introduced 
into  the  church.  Spanheim  has  a  whole  chapter  on  the  subject. 
So  has  Gibbon.  Waddington  is  to  the  same  effect.  All  these 
writers  side  with  the  heretic  Vigilantius  in  his  attack  on  the 
doctrine  of  the  church.  But  perhaps  these  authorities  are  too 
Protestant  for  the  Vicar.  Let  him  consult  Pusey,  Keble,  and 
Cardinal  Xewman  before  his  reversion.  They  will  tell  him 
(Library  of  the  Fathers,  vol.  ix.,  p.  135,  note)  that  the  invoca- 
tion of  the  saints  was  common  in  the  fourth  century.  Perhaps 
again  these  gentlemen  are  too  "  Iloman  "  for  him.  Be  it  so. 
Maybe  Mr.  Palmer,  of  Worcester  College,  Oxford,  will  suit 
him.  Well,  in  his  "  fifth  letter  to  Cardinal  Wiseman,"  Palmer 
reluctantly  acknowledges  the  fact  that  the  saints  were  invoked 
in  the  fourth  century,  and  he  allows,  without  the  slightest 
hesitation,  that  their  intercessory  power  was  always  acknowl- 


A  Kejoindek.  143 

edged  by  the  Fathers  of  the  Church.  A  ritualist  '*  priest," 
liowever,  likes  a  Bishop  as  an  authority  on  such  matters — not, 
of  course,  an  "Episcopal  Dunce,"  like  him  of  Liverjiool. 
Bishop  Newton  was  a  celebrity  in  his  day,  and  his  "  Disserta- 
tions on  the  Prophecies"  is  one  of  his  monuments.  I  will 
quote  from  the  23d  Dissertation : 

"  Read  only  some  of  the  most  celebrated  Fathers ;  read  the 
orations  of  Basil  on  the  Martyr  Mamas,  and  on  the  Forty 
Martyrs ;  read  the  oration  of  Ephrem  Syrus  on  the  death  of 
Basil,  and  on  the  Forty  Martyrs,  and  on  the  praises  of  the  holy 
martyrs;  read  the  orations  of  Gregory  Nazianzen  on  Atliana- 
Bius,  and  on  Basil,  and  on  Cyprian  ;  read  the  orations  of  Greg- 
ory Nyssen  on  Ephrem  Syrus,  and  on  the  martyr  Theodorus, 
and  on  Meletius,  Bishop  of  Antioch ;  read  the  sixty-sixth  and 
other  homilies  of  Chrysostom  ;  read  his  orations  on  the  martyrs 
of  Egypt,  and  other  orations,  and  you  will  be  greatly  astonished 
to  find  how  full  they  are  of  this  sort  of  superstition,  what  powers 
and  miracles  are  ascribed  to  the  Saints,  what  prayers  and  praises 

are  offered  up  to  them And  who  are  the  great  patrons  and 

advocates  of  the  same  worship  now  ?     Are  not  tiikir  lkoiti- 

MATE  SUCCESSORS  AND  DEFENDANTS.  THE  MONKS,  AND  PRIESTS, 
AND  BISHOPS  OF  THE  ClIURCH  OF  RoME  ?  " 

Correct  you  are.  Bishop  Newton !  What  more  can  be  de- 
sired? The  Yicar  will  admit  that  if  any  Saint  may  be  lawfully 
invoked,  the  Blessed  Virgin — "  the  Chief  of  Saints  "  may  be. 
How  preposterously  ridiculous,  then,  and  absurd  it  is  for  such 
as  he  to  write  and  speak  on  this  subject  as  if  the  honor  paid 
by  the  Catholic  Church  to  our  Blessed  Lady  differed  at  all  in 
Jcind  from  that  paid  to  other  saints.  That  they  differ  in 
dt  'free  I  delight  to  proclaim,  and  God  forbid  that  any  profess- 
\\\r  Christian,  who  knows  what  he  is  talking  about,  should 
hesitate  to  acknowledge  her  unspeakable  privileges,  or  allow 
that  any  one  whose  faith  respecting  the  Incarnation  was  sound, 
could  possibly  go  too  far  in  venerating  her  who  is  "  blessed 
among  women."  But  we  have  no  special  doctrine  respecting 
the  veneration  due  to  her.  She  is  to  be  honored,  because  all 
saints  are  to  be  honored,  and  for  no  other  reason.  She  is  to  be 
honored  more  than  other  saints,  l)ecause  certain  facts  are  re- 


144  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

vealed  to  us  respecting  her,  both  in  Tloly  Scripture  and  by 
Tradition,  from  whicli  we  know  tliat  God  woidd  liave  us 
especially  to  honor  her  wlioni  lie  has  chosen  to  honor  above 
all  other  saints.     So  much  oijxissant  on  this  topic. 

Having  closed  his  quotations  from  the  Fathers,  the  Vicar 
says  :  "  I  am  credibly  informed  that  no  instance  is  to  be  found 
in  an  ecclesiastical  writer  of  even  the  corrupt  reading  fpsn 
l)eing  interpreted  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  till  S.  Bernard's  time 
(12th  cent.)."  01  O!  Save  me  from  such  *' learned  friends  " ! 
Alas!  renowned  Oxford!  Verily  you  have  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  thieves  in  this  diocese  of  Fredericton  and  been 
despoiled  of  your  fair  fame !  I  beg  your  readers  to  remember 
that  the  above  statemciit  is  made  by  a  man  who  said  that  I 
ought  to  be  "  more  modest," — that  I  was  "  ignorant  or  disin- 
genuous,"— that  I  wanted  "knowledge  or  understanding," — and 
that  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  stand  .at  my  elbow,  as  a  tutor, 
to  instruct  me  how  to  read  my  own  authorities.  AVhew !  The 
"  learned  friend  "  who  so  "  credibly  informed  "  the  Vicar  must 
have  had  perfect  confidence  in  the  unlimited  voracity  of  his 
shark  for  anti-Catholic  garbage.  By  and  by  I  will  administer 
a  counter-irritant,  in  the  shape  of  quotations  from  ecclesiastical 
writers  many  hundred  years  before  St.  Bernard. 

Again  he  says:  "I  cannot  find  the  slightest  liint  for  tlie 
modern  Roman  interpretation  of  Gen.  iii.  15."  And  yet 
every  Father  he  quoted  gave  simply  the  "  Roman  interpreta- 
tion," viz.,  that  Jesus  Christ,  our  "  all  in  all "  in  life  and  in 
death,  crushed  the  serpent's  head  as  our  only  Redeemer  and 
Saviour  and  by  the  prowess  of  His  own  Divine  and  Almighty 
power, — while  the  Blessed  Mary  His  Mother  crushed  it  by  the 
Grace  and  Merits  of  that  same  Saviour  whom  she  herself 
in  the  Magnificat  calls — "God,  my  Saviour"  even  before  He 
was  born.  By  the  same  Grace  and  Merits  "  all  faithful  Chris- 
tians" triumph  over  Satan,  as  St.  Paul  beautifully  says :  "  May 
the  God  of  Peace  crush  Satan  speedily  under  your  feet,"  Rom. 
xvi.  20.  Of  course  the  Fathers  knew  nothing  of  the  doctrine 
which  he  calumniously  attributes  to  the  Catholic  church. 
There  is  no  escape  for  the  unfortunate  Vicar  here.  "Mini- 
mizing ! "  he  will  exclaim  in  the  agony  of  his  shame.     Bah ! 


A  Rejoindek.  145 

As  soon  could  the  hand  of  man  tear  from  the  vault  of  heaven 
a  star  which  Almighty  power  had  hung  there,  as  i)luck  from  its 
place  a  single  truth  which  the  Spirit  of  God  has  set  to  shine 
forever  in  the  Church's  everlasting  creed. 

The  truth  of  Scripture,  as  St.  Jerome  well  says,  is  not  in  the 
words,  but  in  the  sense — "  nee  putemus  ui  verbis  Scripturarum 
esse  Evangelium,  sed  in  sensu.^^  To  whom  will  my  Protestant 
friends  apply  for  the  "  Roman  interpretation  "  ?  To  Catholics 
themselves  or  to  a  conceitedly  bloated  m.ushroom  growth  of  yes- 
terday— a  ritualistic  Vicar  ?  I  need  not  pause  for  a  reply.  But 
for  their  benefit  I  will  here  introduce  a  witness  whose  authority 
is  simply  supreme.  Hugo  Grotius,  who  lived  1583-16-i5,  was 
one  of  the  most  learned  of  Protestants  and  certainly  a  choice 
specimen  of  wisdom  and  virtue.  He  was,  too,  a  bosom  friend 
of  the  celebrated  Jesuit  Petau  (Petavius).  In  his  commentary 
on  Genesis  iii.  15,  speaking  of  Ijpsa,  Grotius  says — (I  trans- 
late):' 

"The  Vulgate  has  Ipsa,  as  if  it  were  spoken  of  the  woman, 
but  in  a  sense  not  improper." 

Now  Grotius  had  no  difficulty  in  seeing  that  the  sense  was 
the  same  to  his  Protestant  intellect  as  to  that  of  his  Catholic 
friend  whether  Ipse,  Ipsa,  or  Ipsnm  was  used.  And  that 
sense,  as  T  have  so  often  pointed  out,  is  that  the  whole  victory 
over  the  serpent  is  to  be  referred  to  Christ,  who  "  blotted  out 
the  handwriting  of  the  decree  which  was  against  us  ...  . 
fastening  it  to  the  Cross  ....  triumphing  openly  ....  in 
Himself."  Coloss.  ii.  14-15.  Of  course,  it  were  too  much  to 
expect  every  theological  upstart  of  the  calibre  of  this  ritualist- 
ico-sacerdotal  wight  to  be  a  Grotius.  Yes,  indeed,  but  we  have 
at  least  the  right  to  demand  more  modesty  in  the  use  of  those 
phrases  with  which  your  readers  are  familiar  in  the  prophetic 
writings.  From  the  "occipital  region  "  of  the  Vicar's  brain  a 
sign  has,  for  some  time,  been  hanging  out  in  large  type — "  The 
word  of  the  Lord  came  to  me  saying ; "  or  "  The  burden  of  the 
word  of  the  Lord  to  the  Catholic  Church,  her  Popes,  Cardinals, 
Bishops,  Theologians,  and  Biblical  scholars  by  the  hand  of  the 

'  "Vulgatus  habet,  Ipsa,  quasi  de  muliere  ageretur,  seusu  non 
male." 


146  IrsE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Vicar — the  'Priest  of  the  Mission  Chapel.'"  Let  him  call  in 
that  sign  and  many  of  his  follies  and  impertinences  may  be 
forgotten. 

But  the  hugest  joke  in  the  whole  series  of  "  Strictnres  "  is 
his  appeal  to  the  "  Vincentian  Canon,"  "  the  criterion  of  Cath- 
olicity," viz. — "  that  which  hath  been  believed  everywhere,  at 
all  times,  by  all  men."  Even  here  he  is  at  his  old  trick  of 
copying  second,  perhaps  third  —  or  fourth-hand.  It  is  evi- 
dent he  knows  nothing  about  the  work  of  St.  Vincent  of 
Lerins  from  which  he  professes  to  quote.  There  is  no  such 
work  of  St.  Vincent's  as  that  given  by  the  Vicar — ''  adv.  Ilaer- 
eses."  The  work  in  which  the  celebrated  Canon  occurs  is  the 
"  Commonitorium  (or  Peregrinus)  adversus  Ilaey^eticos.''''  A 
full  translation  of  the  Canon  is  as  follows :  "  In  the  Catholic 
Church  herself  very  great  care  is  to  be  taken  that  we  hold  that 
which  has  been  believed  everywhere,  always  and  by  all  men." 
The  remainder  of  the  chapter  from  which  this  is  taken  must  be 
veritable  "  gail  and  wormwood  "  to  an  Anglo-ritualist.  Think 
of  the  Vicar  quoting  this  against  me !  11a !  Ila ! !  Ha ! ! !  O 
'tis  too  good !  He  belongs  to  a  school  of  thought  (?)  or  senti- 
ment about  eighteen  years  old — a  sort  of  aftermath  of  tl  j 
Tractarian  Movement  led  by  Newman,  Pusey,  and  Keble. 
How  many  of  his  peculiar  religious  tenets  were  taught  and 
practiced  among  Anglicans  here  before  his  advent  three  or 
four  years  ago?  Why  is  he  now  tabooed,  shunned,  and  ostra- 
cized as  a  theological  leper  by  his  brethren,  lay  and  clerical,  in 
the  Church  of  England,  who  charge  against  him  that  he  has 
"  gone  in  the  way  of  Cain  ....  and  perished  in  the  contra- 
diction of  Core,"  and  has  moreover  incurred  all  the  terrible 
penalties  pronounced  by  St.  Paul  against  schism  and  schismat- 
ics? llow  does  he  reconcile  this  with  the  Apostle's  entreaty  : 
"  But  I  beseech  you,  brethren,  that  you  all  speak  the  same 
thing,  and  that  there  be  no  schisms  among  you,  but  be  you 
perfect,  in  the  same  mind,  and  in  the  same  judgment."  What 
is  the  matter  ?  And  yet  he  has  the  "  cheek  "  to  claim  the  at- 
tributes of  "  Universality,  Antiquity,  and  Consent " — the  Vin- 
centi^in  Canon — for  Anglicanism  or  Ritualism  :  which  ?  while 
he  brands  the  teaching  of  the  Catholic  Church  with  "  Idola- 


A  TIkjoindkk.  147 

try,"  "  Apostacy,"  "  Infidelity,"  ''  Impiety,"  "  Blasphemy,"  aiul 
"Novelty."     It  is  too  appalling  to  be  funny,  still 

Spectatum  admissi  risiun  teneatis  amici  i 

A  few  reflections  anent  the  Yincentian  Canon,  in  its  affirm- 
ative sense  one  of  the  touchstones  of  Catholic  doctrine.  There 
is  now  in  session  at  Lambeth,  England,  a  Pan-Anglican  Synod. 
It  will,  doubtless,  discuss  questions  touching  the  very  foimda- 
tions  of  Christian  belief  and  doctrines  that  are  dear  to  every 
Christian  heart  because  they  affect  the  whole  Christian  life. 
Should  the  deliberations  result  in  any  conclusions  these  may 
be  embodied  in  decrees  or  furnish  the  material  for  some  "  Pub- 
lic Worship  Act"  like  that  of  1870,  passed  on  purpose  to  put 
down  Ritualism.  Now,  by  what  will  these  decrees  be  ruled  ? 
By  the  "  Vincentian  Canon  "  ?  O,  no,  but  purely  and  simply 
by  Acts  of  Parliament  passed  by  Henry  YIII.,  Elizabeth,  and 
that  "  young  tiger-cub,  Edward  YL,"  as  Littledale  calls  him. 
These  are  the  cornerstones  of  the  "  National  establishment," 
and  no  stream  can  rise  higher  than  its  source.  What  has  the 
Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Council  decided  and  what 
will  they  decide  ?  This  is  the  crucible  in  which  the  results  of 
the  labors  of  this  Pan-Anglican  Synod  must  be  tried.  They 
will  not  be  worth  the  paper  that  will  record  them  if  they  can- 
not stand  this  test.  How  is  this?  Let  me  state  a  few  historico- 
legal  propositions. 

The  Boyal  Supremacy  in  Spirituals  was  created  by  the  Stat- 
ute 25  Henry  YIII.,  C.  19,  and,  re-enacted  by  1  Elizabeth,  is 
still  law.  What  was  the  object  of  its  creation  and  its  effect? 
I  quote  from  "Brooke's  Privy  CouncilJudgments "  and  "  Fre- 
mantle's  Judgments."  In  Fremantle,  p.  110,  Lord  Chief  Jus- 
tice Campbell  says :  "In  the  ....  year  1534  Henry  finding 
that  there  was  no  chance  of  succeeding  with  his  divorce  suit  with 
the  sanction  of  the  Pope,  and  being  impatient  to  marry  Ann 
Boleyn,  resolved  to  break  with  Home  altogether,  and  preserv- 
ing all  the  tenets  of  the  Roman  Catholic  faith,  to  vest  in  him- 
self the  jurisdiction  which  the  Pope  had  hitherto  exercised  in 
England."  He  proceeds  to  say  that  tliis  seizure  of  the  Papal 
jurisdiction  was  effected  by  the  Statute  25  Henry  YIII.,  C.  19, 


118  IrsE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

hy  which  it  was  enacted  that  "  for  lack  of  justice  at  or  in  any 
of  tlie  courts  of  the  Archbishops,"  "  it  shall  be  lawful  to  the 
parties  grieved  to  appeal  to  the  King's  Majesty  in  the  King's 
Court  of  Chancery,  where  delegates  are  to  be  appointed  under 
the  Great  Seal,  who  are  to  adjudicate  upon  the  appeal.  This 
appeal  is  given  in  all  causes  in  the  courts  of  the  Archbishops  of 
this  realm,  as  well  in  the  causes  of  a  purely  spiritual  nature 
which  might  hitherto  have  been  carried  to  Rome,  as  in  the 
classes  of  causes  of  a  temporal  nature,  enumerated  in  statute 
2-i,  Henry  VIII.,  C.  12."  Now  Lord  Campbell  does  not  mince 
matters  in  assigning  uiotives  to  Henry  which  induced  him  to 
break  what  had  been  the  fundamental  law  and  invariable  prac- 
tice of  his  realm  since  it  had  been  a  Christian  country.  It  was 
to  gain  the  adulterous  and  incestuous  possession  of  the  wretched 
object  of  his  lust,  whom  he  was  presently  to  sacrifice  by  a 
bloody  death  to  his  jealousy.  What  Avas  Esau's  selling  his 
birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage  to  this  infamy  on  the  part  of  a 
Christian  king  ? 

The  effect  of  this  statute  was  not  only  to  transfer  to  the  king 
an  authority  hitlierto  exercised  by  the  Pope,  but  by  the  same 
stroke  it  degraded  the  Bishops  and  Archbishops  of  the  King's 
realm  from  the  place  they  had  hitherto  occupied,  as  feeding 
each  one  his  portion  of  the  flock  of  Christ,  over  which  the 
Holy  Ghost,  by  the  hand  of  Peter,  had  made  them  Bishops,  to 
the  condition  of  mere  officers  of  the  King,  discharging  a  spir- 
itual obligation  imder  him,  which  they  received  from  him,  just 
as  all  the  civil  officers  of  his  kingdom  received  their  civil  juris- 
diction from  him — an  infinite  degi'adatlon  which  lies  upon  the 
Anglican  Episcopate  assembled  to-day  in  Synod  at  Lambeth ; 
infinite  because  it  changes  the  mission  5f  the  Holy  Ghost  for 
the  exercise  of  divine  endowments,  into  the  mission  of  a  civil 
ruler,  incapable  of  communicating  it.  I  here  prescind  alto- 
gether from  the  question  of  the  validity  of  Anglican  Orders. 
I  speak  of  vt^liat  the  effect  would  be  if  these  orders  were  valid, 
as  in  the  Russian  church. 

Again  :  This  Statute  25,  Henry  VIII.,  enacted  not  only  what 
was  contrary  to  all  Christian  practice,  and  to  all  Christian  his- 
tory, up  to  that  time,  in  all  the  countri'js  wherein  the  Christian 


A  Rejoinder.  149 

religion  had  been  planted ;  but  it  enacted  what  is  contrary  to 
reason,  inasmuch  as  it  confounded  the  Divine  kingdom,  and 
the  functions  carried  on  in  it  by  a  Divine  gift  proceeding  from 
tlie  Person  of  our  Divine  Lord,  with  the  functions  of  the  liuman 
kingdom,  which  is  the  outcome  of  the  natural  society  of  man. 
God,  indeed,  stood  at  the  head  and  origin  of  this  natural  society 
of  man,  and  authorized  the  powers  that  be,  as  proceeding,  me- 
diately, from  Ilim  ;  but  He  had  distinguished  from  it  the  Spirit- 
ual kingdom  of  His  Son,  and  up  to  that  time  ail  Christian  na- 
tions had  recognized  the  distinction.  Henry  YIH.  began  this 
fundamental  confusion  of  the  Divine  with  the  human  kijig- 
dom ;  because  the  seizure  of  jurisdiction  is  the  seizure  of  the 
Supreme  power,  on  which  rests  the  exercise,  though  not  the 
essence,  of  all  anthorit3\  See  Allies — "  Per  Crucem  ad  Luceni." 
What  becomes  of  the  Yincentian  Canon, — "  the  criterion 
of  Catholicity"  to  use  the  Vicar's  own  words?  Alas!  It  will 
find  no  echo  in  the  Pan-Anglican  Synod.  It  has  no  use  for  it. 
It  can  define  no  doctrine,  it  can  teach  nothing  having  the  slight- 
est binding  obligation  on  the  conscience  of  the  most  humble 
member  of  the  church  it  claims  to  represent.  The  Privy  Coun- 
cil is  its  master.  Over  fifty  years  ago  it  took  the  place  of  the 
Court  of  Delegates,  originally  appointed  under  the  Royal  Su- 
premacy, as  enacted  by  the  Statute  25,  Henry  YIII.  In  this 
Court  the  Queen  decides  personally.  During  'the  last  thiity- 
eight  years,  from  the  Gorham  case  (1850)  to  the  i)resent  time, 
it  has  had  to  deal  with  questions  which  embrace  the  whole 
range  of  Christian  belief  aiid  Christian  life.  Thus  in  the  judg- 
ment in  Heath  vs.  Biirder^  in  1802,  it  had  to  deal  with  our 
Lord's  Atonement,  with  Justification,  and  the  Forgiveness  and 
Remission  of  sins.  In  the  case  of  WiWuDnfi  vs.  The  B'luhop 
of  Salisbmn/,  and  Wilson  vs.  Fendale^  it  had  to  deal  with  the 
Inspiration  of  Scripture,  the  doctrine  of  Eternal  Rewards  and 
Punishments,  the  belief  in  Prophecy,  and  many  of  the  most 
intricate  questions  of  theology.  In  the  Gorham  cases  it  decided 
that  it  was  open  to  an  Anglican  minister  to  hold  and  teach 
Baptismal  Regeneration,  but  not  punishable  in  an  Anglican 
minister  to  deny  it.  In  the  cases  of  Liddell  vs.  WeKterton  and 
IJddell  vs.  Beal,  it  laid  down  that  in  the  Church  of  England 


150  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Irs  cm. 

there  was  "  no  longer  an  altar  of  sacrifice,  but  merely  a  table 
at  whicli  the  coniniunicants  were  to  partake  of  the  Lord's  Sup- 
per ;  that  the  term  altar  is  never  used  to  describe  it,  and  there 
is  an  express  declaration  at  the  close  of  the  Service  against  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  with  which  the  ideas  of  an  altar 
and  sacrifice  are  closely  connected." 

But  a  word  more  on  this  topic.  As  in  times  past  in  other 
places  Anglican  Bishops  and  writers  have  charged  all  sorts  of 
corruptions  in  morals,  in  discipline  and  doctrine  to  the  Catholic 
Church,  so  to-day  the  halls  at  Lambeth  will  ring  out  the  old 
changes.  Perhaps  too  the  tremendous  importance  of  Ipsa  will 
be  learnedly  dwelt  upon.  Not  Aiiglifan  right  but  Roman 
wrong  will  be  the  burden  of  their  speech.  This  is  the  every 
day  defence  of  the  Church  of  England.  But  how  can  Roman 
sins  justify  the  position  taken  up  by  her  on  the  Royal  Su])rem- 
acy  ?  What  this  Pan-Anglican  Synod  ought  to  set  itself  to 
prove  is  that  this  Royal  Supremacy  in  Spirituals  is  compatible, 
either  with  historic  facts  before  the  time  of  Henry,  or  with  the 
Christian  faith  in  itself,  or  with  reason,  as  the  general  guide  of 
human  things ;  that  our  Saviour  has  made  promises  to  be  with  it 
and  with  the  Bishops  who  are  created  by  it ;  that  lie  has  promised 
in  general  to  be  with  Bishops  who  allege  that  they  make  a  por- 
tion of  the  church,  though  not  in  communion  ^vith  the  rest  of 
it,  even  as  they  themselves  conceive  it,  and  who  besides  receive 
their  spiritual  jurisdiction  from  a  King  or  a  Queen.  Would 
the  Vicar  just  fresh  from  the  Fathers  give  us  the  names  of  a 
few  who  point  out  the  grounds  on  which  controversies  of  the 
Faith  are  to  be  decided  by  Queens?  And  it  might  assist  the 
Synod  in  proving  their  case  if  he  would  forward  his  own  "  true 
Catholic  "  views  of  the  "  Yincentian  Cajion  "  especially  in  its 
exclusive  seme.    See  Allies  on  "  The  Royal  Supremacy." 


A  Rejoinder.  151 

LETTER  X. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IP8UM — A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe  : 

Sir, — I  continue  my  observations  on  the  Yicar's  fifth  letter. 
Near  its  close  he  says :  "  Of  course  it  woiikl  be  simply  impos- 
sible for  any  one  to  show  that  falsifications  and  forgeries  were 
palmed  off  upon  Christendom  for  the  mere  sake  of  supporting 
the  corrupt  reading  of  Genesis  iii.  15."  Yes,  indeed  ;  ''  simply 
impossible "  and  therefore  not  shown.  And  yet  the  cry  of 
"  falsifications  and  forgeries  "  has  been  his  paint,  battle-axe  and 
war-whoop  ever  since  he  had  the  infelicity  to  champion  Bishop 
Kingdon's  scholarship.  What  a  humiliating  confession  !  "What 
an  ignominious  "  biting  of  the  dust "  !  But  he  comes  to  time 
again.  I  must  here  protest  that  this  "killing  of  the  dead  over 
again"  has  become  as  dull  to  myself  as  I  fear  it  is  otiose  to 
your  readers.  I  have  to  ask  their  earnest  attention,  however, 
to  what  immediately  follows.  It  certainly  points  a  moral  on 
the  disreputable  ignorance  and  inconsistency,  want  of  logic  and 
disgusting  pretentiousness  of  the  Vicar  which  he  has  not,  per- 
haps, hitherto  equalled.  Here  is  the  paragraph  on  which  I 
comment : 

"  About  the  10th  or  11th  century  a  forgery  in  the  shape  of 
a  panegyric  on  the  Virgin  was  issued  by  an  unknown  author 
under  the  name  of  Methodius  (312  A.D.).  It  is  full  of  extrav- 
agant expressions  and  adulations,  together  wnth  direct  invoca- 
tion and  worship  of  the  Virgin.  It  has  deceived  people  up  to 
the  present  day — has  been  translated  in  Clarke's  Ante-Nicene 
Library  as  genuine,  and  quoted  as  genuine  in  Blunt's  Theologi- 
cal Diet,  under  the  head  of  '  Mary.'  It  is  now  condenmed  both 
by  English  and  Roman  theologians  as  spurious  and  not  only 
spurious  in  the  sense  of  being  attributed  by  mistake  to  Metho- 
dius, but  as  a  forgery,  because  the  writer  claims  at  the  outset 
to  be  the  writer  of    the  Symposium  on   Chastity  which  is 


Methodius 


■> »» 


Here  is  emphatic  testimony,  supplied  by  himself,  to  the 


152  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

stupefying  prejudice  of  the  Yicar, — to  the  utter  worthlessness 
of  liis  knowledge  on  the  matters  he  so  gallantly  undertook  to 
handle,  and  to  the  atrocious  recklessness  of  the  manner  in  which 
he  has  done  his  work.  His  mind,  fed  so  long  on  the  uncouth 
Sliibholeths  of  "  PojDe  "  Littledale's  "  Books  on  the  Koman  Con- 
troversy," seems  a  weltering  chaos  in  respect  of  divine  things 
connected  with  the  Catholic  religion.  One  would  have  thought 
that  "six  weeks"  spent  in  an  incubator  constructed  of  "copious 
indices  "  of  the  Catholic  Fathers,  with  a  yai'd  stick  close  by 
to  test  the  progress  of  the  evolnting  chick,  must  tend  to  clarify 
the  theological  conceptions  of  any  mind.  So  to  think  must 
be  an  error.  Bit  who  is  sufficient  to  heal  a  mind  so  distem- 
pered? Exorlare  allqxds  ex  ossihus — ?  O  well,  let  him  con- 
sult the  "  Eirenicon,"  "  Plain  Reasons  "  or  Tyler's  "  Worship  of 
the  Virgin" — the  mind  grows  by  what  it  feeds  on,  and  the 
ajjpetite  comes  by  eating,  as  the  French  proverb  says.  Mean- 
while let  me  put  your  readers  in  touch  with  the  Vicar  as  he 
manifests  himself  in  the  above  quotation  from  his  letter. 

St.  Methodius  was  an  illustrious  Father  of  the  Church  and 
Bishop  of  Tyre.  He  was  martyred  in  the  last  general  pei-se- 
cution  about  312.  His  works  were  famous  among  the  ancients. 
Among  them  is  one  entitled — "  The  Banquet  of  the  ten  Virgins 
or  a  Symposium  on  Chastity."  It  is  an  eulogium  of  the  state 
and  virtue  of  Virginity.  A  discourse  is  put  into  the  mouth 
of  each  of  these  virgins  in  commendation  of  this  virtue.  The 
holy  Bishop  thus  teaches  that  Christ,  the  Prince  of  \'irgins, 
coming  from  heaven  to  teach  men  the  perfection  of  vii'tue, 
planted  among  them  the  state  of  virginity,  to  which  a  ])articular 
degree  of  glory  is  due  in  heaven — (Apoc.  XIV.  4),  and  he  calls 
it  "  the  greatest  gift  of  God  to  man,  and  the  most  nol)le  and 
most  beautiful  oifering  that  can  be  made  by  man  to  God,  the 
most  excellent  of  all  vows."  Such  is  a  summary  of  this  l)Cok 
so  celebrated  in  the  Catholic  Church.  Milton  embalms  its 
spirit  in  his  beautiful  lines : 

So  dear  to  Heaven  is  saintly  Chastity, 
That,  when  a  soul  is  found  sincerely  so, 
A  thousand  hveried  angels  lacky  her, 
Driving  far  off  each  thing  of  sin  and  guilt. 


A  Rejoinder.  153 

About  its  autborsliip  there  is  not  now,  nor  has  there  ever 
been,  the  shadow  of  a  shade  of  doubt  Indeed  tlie  unanimity 
of  critics  on  the  genuineness  of  all  the  writings  attributed  to 
Methodius  which  have  reached  us  is  well-nigh  marvellous ;  more 
especially  when  we  know  that  somebody  is  always  to  be  found 
who,  after  "six  weeks"  among  "copious  indices,"  is  ready  to 
'  better  the  attempt  of  the  philoso])hers  of  Laputa  to  extract 
sunbeams  from  cucumbers.  For  instance,  the  only  work  con- 
sidered doubtful  by  recent  critics  is  his  treatise  "  On  Free  Will,^" 
but  the  Rev.  "William  R.  Clark  of  Oxford,  who  translates  it  for 
Clarke's  Ante-Nicene  Library,  says :  '*  The  internal  evidence 
must  be  said  to  confirm  the  ancient  testimonies  which  assiijn  it 
to  Methodius."  This  is  the  language  of  the  "  Introduction." 
Now  this  "  Library  "  (Vol.  XIV.)  contains  all  his  writings  and 
they  are  all  declared  to  be  genuine.  I  wish  to  draw  the  atten- 
tion of  your  readers  to  the  "  Oration  concerning  Simeon  and 
Anna  on  the  day  they  met  in  the  Temple^''  which  well  deserves 
the  careful  and  thoughtful  consideration  of  all  students,  theo- 
logically inclined,  Anglican  as  well  as  Catholic.  This  oration 
the  Vicar  in  his  grandiose  way  pronounces  a  ^''forgeryP  He 
merely  echoes  the  words  of  one  Tyler,  a  "  Bachelor  of  Divinity," 
(save  the  mark !)  who  about  fifty  years  ago  issued  the  first  edi- 
tions of  two  books  filled  with  quotations  from  the  Fathers, 
merely  asserting  that  Christ  is  the  one  mediator  between  God 
and  man — a  doctrine,  as  I  have  shown,  no  less  earnestly  taught 
by  Catholic  theologians  and  spiritual  writers  than  by  the  Fathers. 
These  books  are  among  the  "copious  indices"  in  which  the 
Vicar  travailed  in  compiling  his  "  little  thesaurus  of  argument 
for  the  public  against  the  sophistries  and  vain  boastings 
of  Romanist  controversialists."  Did  he  have  any  idea  how 
"  little  "  it  would  be  \  I  trust  his  "  public  "  will  consider  he 
has  kept  his  promise.  But  I  will  return  to  Tyler's  books  later. 
Why  does  the  Vicar  catch  up  and  repeat  Tyler's  words,  that 
the  "  Oration  "  is  a  "  forgery  "  ?  Purely  and  only  because  it  is 
"full  of  extravagant  expressions  and  adulations,  together  ^vith 
direct  invocations  of  the  Virgin."  O  those  "  impious"  invoca- 
tions !  They  act  upon  him  like  a  scarlet  cloth  in  a  Spanish 
bull-fight.     Has  he  any  knowledge  beyond  this  on  which  he 


154  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

could  base  his  claim?  Not  a  particle.  Has  he  given  your 
readers  any  authority  for  his  statement  that  the  "  Oration  "  "  is 
now  condemned  both  bv  English  and  Roman  theologians  as 

I/O  o 

spurious  and  a  forgery  "  ?  None.  But  that  makes  no  differ- 
ence, because  his  faculty  of  smell  in  detecting  a  "  Roman " 
forgery  is  never  at  fault  except  when  it  is  an  anti-Roman  for- 
gery and  "advantageous  to  our  church,"  as  in  Bishop  Stross- 
mayer's  case.  Then  he  "  barks  up  the  wrong  tree,"  but  only 
by  accident.  He  does  not  mean  to  adopt  the  horrid  principle 
that  "  the  end  justifies  the  means."  O  no — that  were  too 
"  Jesuitical." 

Now  I  will  prove  for  your  readers  that  the  "  Oration  "  in 
question  is  neither  '"spurious"  nor  a  "forgery,"  but  a  genuine 
work  of  St.  Methodius.  And  first,  there  is  a  strong  antecedent 
jDrobability  arising  from  the  fact  alone  that  he  wrote  the  "  Ban- 
quet of  the  ten  Virgins"  or  Symposisni  on  Virginity.  The 
Blessed  Virgin — the  Virgin  par  excellence — was  the  first  woman 
who  consecrated  herself  to  Christ  in  that  state.  A  mind  and 
heart,  therefore,  properly  balanced  in  presence  of  divine  things 
would  be  quite  prepared  to  hear  "  very  excellent  things  spoken 
of  her  by  divines  of  all  ages,"  as  the  Vicar  himself  admits. 
Of  whom,  then,  would  St.  Methodius  more  naturally  and 
fittingly  use  these  "  expressions  and  adulations,"  impiously  de- 
clared by  the  Vicar  to  be  "  extravagant "  1  ijut  I  do  not  care 
to  deal  in  probabilities  on  such  a  matter.  We  all  know  that 
some  persons  have  so  very  characteristic  a  manner  of  writing 
that  any  practiced  reader  oan  at  once  pronounce  the  authorship 
of  their  disputed  works.  There  is,  for  instance,  no  mistaking 
Macaulay's,  Carlyle's  or  Cardinal  Newman's  compositions. 
And  the  same  thing  is  observable  in  many  of  the  Fathers. 
Now,  the  great  critics  say  that  no  writers  have  styles  more 
characteristic  of  their  authors  than  the  works  of  St.  Methodius 
have  of  himself.  His  language  (Greek),  they  say,  is  elaborately 
ornate.  The  most  flowery  metaphors  meet  us  at  every  turn. 
See  even  the  translation  in  Clarke's  "Library" — it  is  loaded 
with  epithets.  He  expresses,  says  Du  Pin,  a  few  thoughts  in 
many  words.  His  interpretations  of  Scripture  are  almost 
always  mystical.     His  writings  show  him  to  have  been  well 


A  Rejoindkr.  155 

read  in  the  heathen  Classics,  to  have  warmly  admired  their 
beauties,  but  to  have  held  their  objects  in  abhorrence.  His 
treatise  on  "  Free-will "  displays  an  accurate  acquaintance  with 
Philosophical  matters.  But  his  most  striking  peculiarity  is  his 
violent  antipathy  to  the  errors  commonly  attributed  to  Oi  ^cu. 
Now,  even/  one  of  these  characteristics  of  St.  Methodius'  confess- 
edly genuine  writings  is  to  be  found  in  the  "  Oration  "  which  the 
Vicar,  without  any  knowledge  of  it  liimself  but  simply  as  play- 
ing parrot  to  Tyler,  calls  a  "forgery."  What  has  become  of 
"  the  critical  apparatus  "  which  early  in  this  discussion  he  led 
us  to  believe  he  carried  around  in  his  breeches'  pocket  ? 

Who  are  the  critics  and  what  do  they  say  about  this 
"  Oration "  ?  I  will  select  but  a  few,  and  they  are  the  most 
severe.  Leo  AUatius  (1679)  is  called  the  last  theologian  and 
writer  who  kept  guard  over  the  honor  of  the  letters  of  Greece 
— "dicitur  ultimus  theologus  atque  scriptor  qui  GrsecifB  lite- 
rarium  servaverit  honorem."  JV^atalPs  Enchirid,  p.  115.  He 
was  not  only  a  most  learned  and  judicious  critic  but  he  gave 
to  this  particidar  "Oration"  the  most  careful  and  accurate 
study.  In  his  work — "  Diatriba  de  Methodii  scriptis,  p.  341 — 
Disquisition  on  the  writings  of  St.  Methodius,"  he  declares 
that  "  Nmh  ovum  ita  simile  est  ovo  neque  aqua  aquae,  id  'istius 
jihrasis  et  elocutio,  et  reliqua  dicendi  hiinina,  Symjwsii  foj^n- 
ulis  similia  sunt ;  Egg  is  not  more  like  e^^,  nor  water  like 
water  than  the  phrasing  and  style  and  other  ornaments  of 
speech  of  this  (Oration)  are  like  their  patterns  in  the  sympo- 
sium" (on  Chastity),  He  leaves  no  doubt  about  it  on  an 
honest,  unprejudiced  mind.  But  as  the  Vicar  is  of  a  sceptical 
turn,  and  probably  has  confined  his  attention  so  closely  to  the 
second-hand  rubbish  of  Tyler  et  hoc  omne  genus,  that  he  never 
heard  of  AUatius,  I  will  refer  him  to  the  "Eirem'con" — his 
"perfect  store-house  of  accurate  information."  When  wi-iting 
that  work  Pusey  was  on  the  qui  vive  for  authorities  from  every 
quarter  against  the  honor  paid  to  Mary  in  the  Catholic  Church, 
He,  too,  sought  the  assistance  of  "  learned  friends "  and  to 
scavenge  the  Greek  Liturgies.  Here  are  his  words ;  "  My  own 
studies  not  having  lain  in  the  Greek  Liturgies,  T  consulted  my 
friend  the  Rev.  G.  Williams,  King's  College,  Cambridge,  aiid 


156  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

append  some  observations  which  lie  addresses  to  me."  Will- 
iams writes  to  Pusey  as  follows :  "  It  cannot,  I  think,  be  denied 
that  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church  does  '  even  surpass  the 
Church  of  Rome '  in  their  exaltation  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  in 
their  devotions;  and  all  I  can  say  is,  that  on  this  point  the 
Orientals,  generally  '  so  jealous  of  antiquity,'  have  innovated 
on  the  practice  of  earlier  and,  what  we  hold,  to  be  purer  times. 
This,  we  shall  presently  find,  is  mere  matter  of  history.''''  Yes, 
"mere  matter  of  history,"  as  I  have  already  shown  in  my 
quotations  from  the  Greek  Fathers  of  the  first  six  centuries. 
Very  creditable  to  Cambridge  is  this  straightforward  confes- 
sion. But  this  is  not  the  point  now.  What  does  Cambridge 
say  about  Leo  Allatius  as  an  authority?  The  testimony  is  very 
satisfactory.  Williams  tells  Pusey  that  "we  cannot  have  a 
more  competent  witness  than  Leo  Allatius"  on  the  Greek 
Office  Books.  Who  support  the  judgment  of  Leo  on  St. 
Methodius'  Oration i  Natalis  Alexander,  a  host  in  himself; 
Du  Pin,  the  most  cautious  and  sceptical  of  critics ;  Fabricius, 
the  most  severe  and  judicious  of  critics,  and  Gallandus,  a  hyper- 
critic.  In  addition  to  these  we  have  the  authority  of  the  trans- 
lators in  Clarke's  Ante-Nicene  Library  (18G9)  and  Blnnt's  Theo- 
logical Dictionary.  The  latter  is  a  favorite  book  of  the  Vicar's, 
and  I  have  a  right  to  use  it  against  him,  more  especially  since 
it  is  scarcely  possible  to  turn  over  ten  pages  of  it  without  meet- 
ing with  some  more  or  less  open  attack  on  the  Catholic  Church. 
Again,  what  will  your  readers  say  to  his  treatment  of  Clarke's 
"  Library  "  ?  Shortly  ago  I  quoted  from  a  Homily  of  St.  Greg- 
ory Thauniaturgus.  Thereupon  he  rushed  frantically  into  your 
columns  with  a  "Caution"  and  declared  it  "spurious,"  appeal- 
ing to  the  fact  that  Clarke's  "Library"  classified  it  with 
"  spurious  or  doubtful "  writings  of  St.  Gregory.  I  disposed 
of  the  "  Caution  "  very  summarily.  But  now  when  the  same 
"  Library "  declares  the  "  Oration "'  of  St.  Methodius  to  be 
genuine  the  Vicar  screams  out — deceit !    Consistent,  indeed  ! 

Here  I  might  leave  this  "  Oration,"  but  I  am  anxious  that 
your  readers  should  know  a  good  deal  more  about  it  than  the 
Vicar  appears  to  know.  Notwithstanding  what  the  critics 
quoted  above  say,  there  is  a  diflSculty,  perhaps  worth  mention- 


A  Rejoindek.  157 

ing,  connected  with  it.  I  refer  to  the  fact  that  in  one  or  two 
passages  it  speaks  of  the  Holy  Trinity  as  if  the  Nicene  doctrine 
on  that  subject  had  been  fully  developed  in  the  time  of  St. 
Methodius,  which  was  not  the  case.  I  leave  the  Vicar  to 
ponder  the  "  Oration  "  and  lind  the  passages.  IJut  it  is  ridiculous 
in  the  extreme  for  people  like  Tyler  and  the  Vicar  (if  he  know 
anything  at  all  about  it)  to  make  this  a  ditficulty,  for  they  dis- 
avow the  principle  upon  which  it  is  built.  If  they  once  con- 
cede that  the  Church  has  a  right  to  alter  its  language  on  sub- 
jects whicli  heresy,  if  nothing  else,  has  rendered  most  impor- 
tant, they  must  not  blame  the  Catholic  Church  for  applying  to 
the  Blessed  Virgin  a  principle  which  they  allow  in  other  cases. 
This  difHculty  led  several  writers  to  doubt  its  genuineness,  but 
by  a  consensus  of  all  the  great  critics,  assuming  their  interpre- 
tation is  correct,  these  technical  expressions  are  interpolations. 
They  say  that  the  "  Oration  "  is  so  clearly  the  work  of  St. 
Methodius  that  they  would  as  soon  think  of  rejecting  a  book 
of  Holy  Scripture  in  consequence  of  one  or  two  existing  inter- 
polations. For  instance :  The  Vicar  rejoices  over  the  fact  that 
what  he  calls  the  "celebrated  interpolation  in  1  John,  v.  7," 
is  now  omitted  in  the  Revised  Version.  Again  :  The  Revisors 
have  omitted  from  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  St.  Matthew  the  words 
— "  For  thine  is  the  kingdom,  and  the  power,  and  the  glory 
forever.  Amen."  Is  this  a  valid  reason  for  rejecting  the 
Gospel  of  St.  Matthew  or  St.  John's  Epistles? ' 


'  The  evidence  above  submitted  in  support  of  the  authenticity  of  the 
"  Oration"  of  St.  Methodms  so  demoralized  the  Vicar,  that  he  did 
not  dare  to  say  a  word  in  reply.  He  put  his  "priestly  vow "  in  his 
breeches'  pocket  with  his  "yard  stick  "and  "critical  apparatus," 
and  went  his  way — to  consult  hia  "learned  friends"  in  England. 
This  cowardly  shirking  of  a  question,  which  he  himself  had  raised, 
is  one  of  many  striking  proofs  of  his  imbecility,  and  is,  besides,  a 
stentorian  confession  that  he  believes  that  no  moral  or  mental  re- 
sponsibility whatever  attaches  to  his  words.  I  need  say  no  more 
now  on  St.  Methodius.  I  v/ill  but  refer  the  learned  reader  to  Bishop 
Fessler's  classic  work,  Institutiones  Patrologice — Institutes  of  Pa- 
trology,  a  new  edition  of  which,  by  the  illustrious  Professor  Jung- 
niann,  of  Louvain  University,  I  have  just  received  fresh  from  the 
press,  for  an  estimate  of  Methodius  and  his  writings. 


168  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

I  have  devoted  thus  mnch  space  to  St.  Methodius  tliat  your 
readers  may  thoroughly  kuow  the  methods  of  the  Vicar — the 
man  wlio  has  prated  so  much  about  "  verification,"  "suppres- 
sion," and  the  "  critical  apparatus" — the  man  who  is  so  <levoid 
of  all  sense  of  shame  and  intellectual  self-respect  as  to  swallow, 
apparently  without  a  grimace,  any  authority,  which,  when  re- 
tailed by  him,  may  assist  in  defaming  the  church  of  Jesus 
Christ,  and  in  "minimizing"  the  honor  to  be  ])aid  to  the 
woman  who  stood  by  His  side  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  I 
have  not  space  for  any  sort  of  vindication  of  those  other  writ- 
ings which,  on  tlie  mere  ipse  dixit  of  Tyler,  the  Vicar  rejects, 
nor  is  it  necessary.  He  refers  your  readers  to  Tyler's  "  Wor- 
ship of  the  Virgin  "  for  a  full  list  of  the  "  palmed  off  "  sermons 
on  the  Blessed  Virgin. 

I  would  poorly  perform  the  task  I  have  set  myself  in  this 
Rejoinder  did  I  allow  the  name  of  this  wretchedly  ignorant 
author  and  his  miserable  book  to  pass,  without  giving  your 
readers  an  idea  of  the  pabulum  on  which  the  Vicar  8uj)port8 
his  lean  and  hungry  creed.  Tyler's  book  has  upwards  of  four 
hundred  octavo  pages  and  sells  for  ten  and  sixpence.  This  is  all  I 
can  say  in  its  favor.  It  displays  an  intense  ignorance  of  some  of 
the  commonest  particulars  in  ecclesiastical  history.  The  author 
shows  himself  unacquainted  with  the  first  principles  of  histor- 
ical or  bibliographical  criticism.  And  the  violation  of  every 
established  law  of  ordinary  reasoning  which  occurs  at  every 
page  would  but  further  disgrace  the  Vicar  were  that  possible. 

Now  it  is  very  easy  for  persons  like  Tyler  and  the  Vicar  to 
be  sceptical  in  the  extreme,  when  the  Blessed  Virgin  is  con- 
cerned. But,  if  they  know  what  they  are  talking  about,  would 
they  like  to  stand  to  their  principles  (so-called)  when  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Holy  Trinity  is  at  stake?  Yet,  I  fearlessly  main- 
tain, in  the  face  of  all  the  Theological  science  ihe  diocese  of 
Fredericton  can  muster,  that  the  historical  grounds  upon  which 
the  Vicar  and  his  "  pals  "  reject  the  veneration  of  the  Blessed 
Mary,  as  practised  in  the  Catholic  church,  may  logically  be 
turned  against  the  adoration  of  our  Divine  Lord  and  Saviour. 
The  possibility  of  such  a  thing  probably  never  crossed  their 
minds.     I  therefore  would  beg  them,  and  all  who  agree  with 


A  Uejoindkk.  159 

them,  seriously  to  consider  the  matter,  and  see  whetlier  they 
can  well  afford  to  use  negative  arguments  against  doctrines 
which  have  once  received  the  sanction  of  Christendom. 

Let  me,  on  so  important  a  matter,  exemplify  my  moaning, 
and  instruct  the  Vicar,  by  shortly  running  through  the  reason- 
ings (?)  of  Tyler's  first  chapter  of  patristic  testimony,  which  ia 
a  review  of  the  evidence  respecting  the  Blessed  Mary,  taken 
from  the  ancient  creeds  and  Apostolic  Fathers. 

Section  2.  "  The  ancient  creeds,"  says  Tyler,  "  contain  no 
allusion  to  any  worship  paid  to  the  Blessed  Virgin,  whereas 
the  creed  of  Pius  IV.  does.  Therefore,  the  Church  of  Rome 
has  added  to  the  primitive  faith." 

Mij  Answer.  The  earlier  creeds  contain  no  allusion  what- 
ever to  any  worship  paid  to  the  Son  or  to  the  Holy  Ghost. 
Has  the  church  then  added  to  the  primitive  faith  by  saying  of 
the  Holy  Ghost — "  who  with  the  Father  and  the  Son  is  adored 
and  glorified  ?"  I  thought  it  had  been  fully  settled,  that  *'to 
add  to  the  Confession  of  the  Churcli,  is  not  to  add  to  the  faith." 
The  wording  here  is  mine,  and  presents  Tyler's  argument  in  a 
more  logical  shape  than  his  own  book  does. 

Section  3.  "  St.  Clement  of  Rome  never  invokes  the 
Blessed  Virgin,  neither  does  St.  Barnabas ;  nor  does  St.  Her- 
nias, St.  Ignatius,  or  St.  Polycarp,"  says  Tyler.  "  Therefore, 
the  Romish  doctrine  was  unknown  in  those  days." 

My  Answer.  Tyler  being  dead  yet  speaks  by  the  Vicar. 
"Will  tlie  Vicar  be  kind  enough,  notwithstanding  my  discourte- 
ous use  of  the  "  Shillalah,"  to  show  me  a  single  invocation  of 
Christ  throughout  the  writings  of  St.  Clement,  St.  Barnabas, 
St.  Hermas,  or  St.  Polycarp  ?  Does  he  believe  that  their  silence 
on  this  point  is  conclusive  or  not  ?  And  if  it  be  not  conclusive 
in  one  case  why  is  it  in  another  ? 

Your  readers  will  see  at  once  what  sort  of  reasoners  I  have 
to  deal  with  in  Tyler  and  his  disciple  and  parasite.  And  tbe 
fallacy,  whicli  is  here  so  palpable,  runs  throughout  the  whole 
book.  The  plain  state  of  the  case  is  this :  The  earlier  Fathers 
are  silent,  say,  as  to  the  doctrines  A,  B,  C,  and  D,  whereof 
Anglicans  admit  A  and  B,  but  reject  C  and  D,  which  Catho- 
lics admit,  and  blind  and  prejudiced  controversialists,   like 


160  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Tyler  and  the  Vicar,  press  their  negative  authority  against  the 
latter  doctrines,  either  in  utter  ignorance  that  the  same  argu- 
ment is  fatal  to  their  own  cause  in  behalf  of  the  docti'ines  A 
and  r,  or  from  gross  want  of  comprehension  of  the  matter. 
The  danger  of  arguing  on  Anglican  principles  may  be  proved 
in  the  case  of  almost  every  important  doctrine.  For  instance  : 
The  Church  of  England  invokes  the  Holy  (xhost  in  the  Litany, 
and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  assert  the  Consubstantiality  of 
the  Holy  Ghost  with  the  Father  and  the  Son.  Now  I  would 
like  to  know  upon  what  grounds  high  church  Anglicans — 
Anglo-Ritualists — can  assent  to  this  when  they  reject  the  doc- 
trine of  Purgatory,  or  the  invocation  of  Saints,  upon  the  plea 
of  insufficient  evidence.  For  every  ancient  authority  they  can 
produce  in  favor  of  the  Consubstantiality  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
I  offer  to  produce  as  unequivocal  an  authority  in  behalf  of  Pur- 
gatory. And  for  every  prayer  to  the  Holy  Ghost,  I  offer  to 
produce  as  direct  an  invocation  to  a  Saint.  But  I  shall  not 
allow  "  Roman "  doctrine  to  be  rejected  on  grounds  which 
would  be  equally  subversive  of  Trinitarian  doctrine ;  nor  have 
I  the  slightest  hesitation  in  saying  that  should  there  be  any 
Anglo-Ritualist  so  wretchedly  ignorant  of  the  first  princi])los, 
I  will  not  say  of  Christianity,  but  of  natural  religion,  as  to  be 
jprepared  to  give  up  his  faith  in  the  Holy  Trinity,  could  it  be 
proved  to  \\\\\\  that  the  ecclesiastical  writers  of  the  first  ten 
centuries  were  perfectly  silent  on  the  subject — I  have  no  hesi- 
tation, I  repeat,  in  saying  that  such  a  person  might  as  profit- 
ably, hie  et  nunc,  do  without  such  a  faith  as  with  it.  Just 
now  the  richest  sight  I  can  picture  would  be  the  Vicar  in 
theological  conflict  with  some  one  of  our  able  Methodist  or 
Presbyterian  ministers.  Where  would  he  be  if  he  could  not 
fall  back  on  those  Catholic  principles  which  in  his  "  Strictures  " 
he  professes  to  reject  ?  Nowhere !  He  would  simply  be 
ground  to  powder.  He  may  have  to  settle  his  position  with 
them  yet  since  he  has  gravely  charged  against  them  that  they 
are  wanting  in  respect  for  the  Mother  of  God.  However,  that 
is  their  affair. 

One  word  more  on  Tyler  as  an  authority  on  Paleooraphy. 
To  make  out  his  miserable  case  he  coolly  sets  aside  as  spurious 


A  Rejoinder.  IGl 

not  only  works  which  one  or  two  critics  had  rejected,  but  some 
of  the  most  niiiversally  acknowledged  works  of  the  Fathers. 
For  instance :  he  tosses  overboard  a  Homily  of  St.  Gregory 
Nazianzen,  which  has  been  received  not  only  by  such  writers 
as  Bellarmine,  Baronius,  and  Labbe,  but  by  the  Benedictines  of 
St.  Maur,  Natalis  Alexander,  Fabricius,  Ceillier,  T'Uemont, 
Dupin,  Baillet,  Daille,  Le  Clerc,  Montagu,  Cave,  Dr.  Pusey, 
Mr.  Palmer,  the  Oxford  editors  of  "  The  Library  of  the 
Fathers," — in  short  by  the  learned  in  such  matters  whatever 
their  creed  or  conununion.  The  poor  ignoranms  did  not  know 
evidently  that  St.  Jerome,  who  studied  theology  at  Constanti- 
nople under  St.  Grefjory,  had  expressly  mentioned  it  as  one  of 
the  works  of  his  "  Master."  De  Viris  Ilhis.,  vol  2,  p.  020. 
He  treats  Homilies  of  St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria  and  St.  Basil  of 
Seleucia  in  the  same  way.  Who  but  an  Oxford  "  Bachelor  of 
Divinity  "  could  be  guilty  of  such  disgusting  folly  and  imper- 
tinence !  This  shows  in  a  few  words  the  character  of  the  book 
from  which  the  Vicar  gets  his  "  thesaurus  of  information  for 
the  public,"  and  to  which  he  refers  your  readers. 

Here  I  leave  Tyler  and  his  book.  Let  me  assure  his  chief 
mourner,  the  Vicar,  that  it  was  not  less  ridiculous  for  him  or 
any  other  Anglican — high  church,  low  church,  broad  church, 
every  church,  no  church — to  write  a  volume  on  the  "  "Worship 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin  "  than  it  would  be  for  an  infidel,  who 
rejects  the  first  principles  of  Christianity,  to  write  a  book 
on  Justification.  As  only  a  Christian  can  understand  the 
latter  doctrine,  so  only  a  Catholic  can  understand  the  former. 


LETTER  XI. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   REJOINDER. 

« 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  begin  to-day  my  critique  on  the  Vicar's  sixth  letter. 
On  the  very  threshold  I  am  met  with  the  shibboleth — 
"  Forgery,"  now  so  stale  to  your  readers.   This  time  he  applies 


102  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

it  to  the  doctrine  of  the  "  Assuinption  of  the  Blessed  Yirgin," 
jS'ow,  wliile  nothing  could  give  nie  greater  delight,  yet,  to 
treat  this  subject  at  all  worthily,  and  in  all  its  bearings,  critic- 
ally, historically,  and  theologically,  would  make  demands  upon 
your  space  and  my  time  altogether  incommensurate  with  its 
relevancy  to  this  discussion.  Besides,  more  captious  and  ex- 
tremely shallow,  more  contemptibly  superficial  observations 
were  never  put  forward  on  a  grave  topic  than  those  copied  by 
the  Vicar  from  one  of  his  favorite  dictionaries.  I  can  see 
nothing  to  save  them  from  being  insulting  to  the  intelligence 
of  your  readers  but  the  character  for  irresponsibility  already 
established  by  the  scribbler  who  transfers  them  to  your  col- 
umns. But  again  :  he  absolves  me  from  any  elaborate  argu- 
ment by  his  own  admissions.  Speaking  of  the  "  Assmnption," 
lie  says  :  "  All  that  can  be  said  for  it  is,  that  it  seems  reason- 
able that  if  Enoch  and  Elijah,  forerunners  of  the  Messiah,  were 
translated  from  e:.rth  without  seeing  corruption  of  their  bodies, 
the  mother  of  the  Redeemer  ought  not  to  be  less  honored.  It 
seems  fit,  certainly,  to  mere  human  reason  that  the  body  which 
bore  the  Son  of  God  should,  like  His  own  body,  see  no  corruj)- 
tion."  Very  good  indeed.  But  it  is  evident  he  does  not 
realize  the  full  force  of  his  own  words.  Common  sense,  how- 
ever, like  nuirder,  will  now  and  then  out— even  from  the 
Vicar.  It  is  true  that  one  of  his  distinguished  religious  pro- 
genitors tells  him  that  "in  religious  matters  Reason  is  worth- 
less," ''Reason  is  the  enemy  of  all  religion,"  and  "in  discuss- 
ing such  matters  we  should  leave  the  jackass  Reason  at 
home";  but  the  Vicar  is  a  "true  Catholic,"  you  know,  and 
does  not  always  agree  with  Martin  perhaps.  Be  it  so.  I  will 
inform  him,  then,  that  Catholicity  is  not  rationalistic,  but  it  is 
a  rational  religion,  and  at  every  step  satisfies  the  demands  of 
the  most  rigid  reason.  The  Catholic  Church  teaches  that  the 
exercise  of  reason  necessarily  precedes  the  acceptance  of  the 
truths  of  religion,  and  that  it  is  an  obligation  laid  upon  reason 
to  inquire  diligently,  and  to  be  certain  that  those  truths  which 
are  proposed  to  its  belief,  have  God  for  their  author,  before  it 
gives  its  assent,  in  order  that  it  may  exercise,  according  to  the 
teaching  of  the  Apostles,  a  "reasonable  obedience."     Sureiy 


A  Rejoindek.  1G3 

truth  cannot  be  in  contradiction  with  the  very  faculty  to  which 
it  is  addressed — cannot  be  hostile  to  that  faculty  whose  natural 
function  is  to  welcome,  assent,  and  embrace  it.  Let  the  Yicar 
not  so  dishonor  God's  noblest  gift  to  man  by  supposing  that 
the  idea  of  the  Assumption,  whose  feast  has  been  celebrated 
throughout  the  Christian  Church  for  over  fourteen  hundred 
years,  which  has  its  roots  so  deep  down  in  the  analogies  of 
faith,  and  which  is  so  logically  and  so  profoundly  connected 
with  truths  which  even  in  the  sixth  century  were  yet  in  an  early 
stage  of  development,  sprang  forth,  like  Minerva  from  the 
head  of  Jupiter,  full  grown  from  the  brain  of  ^onie  obscure 
forger. 

Reason,  he  confesses,  sanctions  the  belief  of  Mary's  Assump- 
tion. This  is  a  good  start.  For  the  present,  then,  it  will  suf- 
fice to  instruct  him  that  its  truth  rests : 

1st,  on  a  positive  and  direct  tradition,  which  reaches  back 
until  lost  in  the  origin  of  the  Liturgy ;  2d,  on  ?i positive  and 
indirect  tradition,  which  can  be  traced  as  far  as  St.  Epij)ha- 
nius,  who  died  in  403 ;  3d,  on  negative  evidence  of  the  highest 
anticjuity,  and  of  the  most  striking  cogency ;  4rth,  on  rigorous 
theological  deduction  from  other  revealed  truths ;  5th,  on  the 
Sensus  iidcliuyn.  the  common  voice  of  the  faithful.  Here  he 
will  find  room  to  work  the  "Vincentian  Canon."  Let  him 
give  but  "  six  weeks' "  conscientious  study  to  the  question  on 
these  lines  and  he  will  find  that 

Belief  is  but  a  higher  faculty  of  Reason 


As  the  snow-headed  moimtain  rises  o'er 
The  hghtning,  and  appUes  itself  to  Heaven. 

Only  a  word  more  on  this  topic.  The  fact  of  the  Corporal 
Assumption  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  is  not  yet  a  dogma  of  Cath- 
olic faith.  It  is  a  "  pious  belief  "  recommended  l)y  its  intrinsic 
reasonableness,  for  surely  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  our 
Divine  Lord  did  not  suffer  that  sacred  body  in  which  He  him- 
self had  dwelt,  and  from  which  He  had  taken  His  own  sacred 
humanity,  to  become  a  prey  to  corruption.  Such  is  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Fathers  in  the  East  and  the  West  from  the  very 


164  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

beginning.     The  belief  met  not  one  opponent  in  its  progress, 
and  but  few  sceptics  ;  was  received  from  the  first  by  all  schools 
of  theology ;  has  been  qualified  as  certain,  not  to  be  denied 
without  rashness,  proximate  to  faith  by  theologians  generally 
— nay,  as  dejide  by  the  first  University  of  Christendom,  that 
of  Paris,  in  1497.     Instead  of  spending  his  time  looking  at  the 
pictures  in  the  "  fine  quarto  edition  of  the  Breviary,"  which 
the  Yicar  says  he  has,  let  him  read  the  Lessons  of  the  Second 
Noctarns  of  the  Office  of  the  Breviary  for  the  15th  of  August, 
where  he  will  find  the  Corporal  Assumption  categorically  as- 
serted and  insisted  upon  by  various  arguments.     Mary  is  the 
"living  ark  of  the  living  God,  which  has  its  resting  place  in 
the  temple  of  the  Lord."     She  is  the  "  living  Paradise"  taken 
up  into  heaven  ;  in  her  the  old  "  curse  "  of  death  "  is  broken." 
"  The  lunnaculate  Virgin,  stained  by  no  earthly  affection,  did 
not  return  to  earth,"  but,  because  she  was  herself  a  "living 
heaven,  has  her  place  in  the  tents  of  heaven."     "  How  could 
she  taste  death,  from  whom  flowed  life  to  all  ?     She  did,  how- 
ever, die,  because  she  was  a  daughter  of  the  old  Adam,  but  she 
was  fitly  taken  up  to  the  living  God  because  she  was  His 
Mother."     "  Animata  Area  Dei  Viventis  ....  quae  requies- 
cit  in  teinplo  Domini. — llodie  Eden  novi  Adam  paradisum 
suscipit  animatum,  in  quo  soluta  est  condemnatio. — Virgo  Im- 
maculata,  quae  nullis  terrenis  inquinata  est  affectibus  .... 
non  in  terram  reversa  est,  sed,  cum  esset  animatum  coelum,  in 
coelestibus  tabernaculis  collocatur. — Ex  qua  enim  omnibus  vera 
vita  manavit,  quomodo  ilia  mortem  gastaret  ?     Sod  eedit  legi 
latae  ab  eo  quem  genuit,  et  ut  f'ia  veterls  Adam,  veterem  sen- 
tentiam  subiit  .  .  .  .  ut  ante*  i  Dei  viventis  Mater,  ad  ilium 
ipsum  digne  assumitur."     To  compress  I  quote  from  but  two 
Lessons  of  the  Nocturns  in  my  Breviary  (Totum),  p.  892,  and 
translate   it   as  above.     These  are  the  thoughts  of  St.  John 
Damascene  (of  Damascus),  the  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  of  the 
Greeks,  taken  from  his  second  sermon,  read  on  the  feast.  How 
sweet  its  music  to  the  Catholic  heart  as  it  rolls  up  through  the 
ages  with  ever  swdlling  chorus!    A  word  about  St.  John.    He 
died  about  780,  before  the  schism  of  the  East,  and  nearly  eight 
liundred  years  before  the  world  heard  of  Anglicanism : 


A  Rejoinder.  165 

This  miserable  pageant  of  untruth, 
Feeble  with  three  poor  centuries  of  age. 

"We  have  the  unexceptionable  testimony  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Cave, 
an  Anglican  critic,  of  Cambridge  University,  that  no  man  can 
have  a  sound  judgment,  who,  reading  his  works,  doth  not 
admire  his  extraordinary  erudition,  the  justness  and  preci- 
sion of  his  ideas  and  conceptions,  and  the  strength  of 
his  reasoning,  especially  in  theological  matters.  Jlistoria 
Liiterarla,  1(588.  Recalling  the  language  of  this  great  Father 
on  the  Assumption  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  can  your  readers 
wonder  tliat  ministers  of  a  church,  "  by  law  established,"  held 
together  by  "legal  fetters"  and  "  state  support  "  and  yet  very 
fast  disintegratin;^,  do  not  think  very  highly  of  St.  John  Da- 
mascene? And  was  it  not  fitting  that  a  sermon  should  be 
preached  in  the  *'  Mission  Chapel "  two  weeks  ago,  which  was 
published  in  your  columns,  June  2Tth,  in  which  the  preacher 
seems  to  go  out  of  his  way  to  insult  the  memory  of  a  man  so 
great,  spiritually  and  intellectually,  that,  I  hope  it  is  not  dis- 
courteous to  say,  the  preacher  would  not  be  wortliy  to  tie  the 
latcliet  of  his  shoo  ?  In  this  sermon  St.  John  is  described  as  a 
"  blind  guide  leading  the  blind  multitude."  Is  not  this,  to 
thinking  men,  the  verj'  acme  of  impertinence  and  dis- 
gusting conceit?  Would  an  Anglican  so  speak  of  Plato 
or  Aristotle,  Marcus  Aurelius  or  Epictetus?  O  no — ]>ut 
one  reason  would  be  that  they  had  written  nothing  in  praise 
I  of  the  Mother  of  God.  Would  he  so  speak  of  Cardinal 
Xewman,  a  living  saint  of  the  Catholic  Churcli  ?  Were 
the  great  old  Greek  saint  walking  amongst  us  what  would  pre- 
vent his  lashing  such  people  across  the  face  for  their  insolence? 
Nothing  but  his  profound  humility  or  the  insigniiicance  of  his 
revilers.  Another  cause  of  the  dislike  felt  l)y  Anglicans  for 
St.  John  of  Damascus  is  to  be  found  in  the  f^ccond  of  his  three 
celebrated  discourses  against  the  Iconoclast  heretics.  The  Em- 
peror Leo,  the  Isaurian,  trying  on  the  Privy  Council  "dodge" 
and  the  tactics  of  Henry  YIIL,  published  his  edict  against  holy 
images  in  726.  St.  Jolin  entered  the  lists  against  the  heresy, 
and  in  this  discourse  he,  like  another  Paul  before  Agi'ippa, 


166  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

points  out  to  the  emperor  that  though  he  was  entrusted  with 
the  government  of  tlie  state  he  had  no  autliority  to  make  decis- 
ions in  j)oi?its  of  ecclesiastical  doctrine.  But  after  all,  "  blind  " 
as  St.  Jolm  Damascene  may  have  been,  will  he  not  compare 
favorably  witli  the  "fathers"  of  the  English  Reformation 
whom  Littledale  calls  "  utterly  unredeemed  villains,"  "  a  set  of 
miscreants,"  and  who  says  that  "  Robespierre,  Danton,  IMarat 
....  merit  quite  as  much  respect  as  Cranraer,  Ridley, 
Latimer  "  ? 

But  enougli.  "  Enoch  and  Elijah  were  translated  from  earth 
without  seeing  corruption  of  their  bodies,"  says  the  Vicar. 
Why  not  Mary  ?  Every  Catholic  believes  it.  It  would,  there- 
fore, be  a  great  glory  to  scientific  theology,  and  a  great  joy  to 
its  professors  if  this  pious  belief  were  to  receive  the  final  sanc- 
tion of  a  dogmatic  definition.  And  I  do  hope  and  pray  that 
before  I  utter  my  Nunc  dimittis  to  this  world,  I  may  have 
lived  to  see  the  edifice  of  JVIary's  peerless  glories  crowned 
by  a  solemn  declaration,  that  the  Catholic  Church  believes  and 
teaches  the  integral  Assumption  of  the  Mother  of  God  as  a 
part  of  Divine  Revelation. 

The  Vicar  next  takes  np.  under  the  heading  "Forgery,"  my 
quotation  from  the  hymn  of  Prudentius.  This  I  have  already 
disposed  of  in  a  previous  letter,  together  with  the  stale  slander 
on  Bishop  Strossmayer  which  the  Vicar,  lately  in  your  columns, 
pathetically  complains  is  a  "fresh  subject"  because,  no  doubt, 
of  its  terrible  force  as  an  argiimentum  ad  hominem.  His  cries 
for  help  from  his  "friends  in  England"  on  Prudentius,  will 
bring  him  no  relief.  The  cowardice  displayed  in  thus  sneaking 
out  of  a  difficulty,  instead  of  manfully  meeting  it,  forcefully 
einphasiz'^s  the  character  and  controversial  methods  of  the  man 
who  could  daio  to  write  :  "  We  cannot  trust  a  quotation  (the 
Church  of  Rome)  gives  from  ancient  authors  till  we  have 
thoroughly  sifted  the  evidence  in  their  favor."  Though  such 
a  statement  from  his  pen  merits  as  little  attention  as  that  of  a 
lunatic  who  would  assert  that  two  and  two  make  eight,  I  would 
like  to  follow  at  length  the  refiections  it  suggests.  If  I  did  the 
Vicar  would  be  "after  you"  for  allowing  me  to  introduce  a 
"  fresh  subject "  and  have  as  much  cause  for  wincing  and  whin- 


A  Rejuindkk.  1G7 

ing  as  the  Strossmaycr  exjjose  gave  liiin.  But  I  cannot,  in  justice 
to  your  readers,  let  it  wholly  pass.  "Ancient  authors  "  inc'oed  ? 
How  many  would  we  have  but  for  the  "Church  of  Konie"' ! 
To  whom  are  we  indebted  for  those  monuments  of  Christian 
antiquity,  the  writings  of  the  Fathers,  hers  not  his  nor  of  any 
of  his  Theological  kith  or  kin,  over  the  very  "  copious  indices  " 
of  which  he  labored  for  "six  weeks,"  with  such  stupid  results, 
to  find  arguments  against  her?  To  whom  are  we  indebted  for 
the  transmission  to  us  intact  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  themselves  ? 

iS^ow,  I  do  not  forget  the  claims  of  our  modern  Protestant 
scholars,  and  I  am  proud  of  them. — Niebuhr,  Mommsen,  Boeh- 
nier,  lianke.  Pertz,  Duruy,  Gibbon,  Grote,  Hallam,  Milner, 
Stubbs,  Freeman  ;  but  their  names  had  been  writ  in  water  but 
for  the  "  Church  of  Pome."  She  put  into  their  hands  the 
boundless  treasures  she  had  gathered  up,  preserved  and  accumu- 
lated in  her  majestic  march  through  the  ages — else,  their  occu- 
pation was  gone.  Blot  out  what  the  "  Church  of  Rome"  has 
done  for  the  study  of  history, — historical  criticism,  the  materials 
on  which  it  is  exercised  and  its  results  as  we  enjoy  them  to-day, 
and  the  remainder  you  might  put  away  in  your  waistcoat  pocket. 
Let  me  prove  this,  though  I  will  give  but  a  merely  suggestive 
sketch.  My  authorities  will  be  entirely  Protestant,  of  great 
name  and  now  living — Wattenbach,  Gardthausen,  writers  in 
the  Enc]jclo_p(£d'ia  Britannica,  and  the  Rev.  Prof.  Stokes,  an 
Anglican  Canon,  in  his  article  in  the  Conteinporary  Ueview 
for  January,  1883,  entitled — "  TheBollandists,"  which  I  heartily 
commend  to  your  readers  as  a  generous  portrayal  of  the  spirit 
and  the  labors  of  many  imperial  sons  of  the  "  Church  of 
Rome."  I  propose  to  speak  magisterially  now,  as  I  can  well 
afford  to  do,  and  I  invite  the  Yicar  if  he  has  any  learned  "  friends 
in  England  "  or  out  of  it,  of  Oxford  or  Cambridge  either,  to  seek 
their  assistance,  should  he  desire  to  dispute  my  statements. 

I  need  not  here  speak  of  the  great  qualities  of  the  present 
illustrious  Pope,  Leo  XIII.  His  wisdom,  his  learning,  his 
single-miudedncss,  his  spotless  character,  his  deep  interest  in  all 
the  arts  and  sciences,  his  true  and  sincere  solicitude  for  the  wel- 
fare of  leligion  and  society,  have  been  duly  applauded  by  the 
whole  world.     A  few  years  ago  when  throwing  open  the  Vati- 


168  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

can  Archives  to  scliolars  for  the  purpose  of  historical  research, 
he  used  these  words — I  need  not  give  liis  own  sonorous  Latin — : 
"  History,  tlie  guide  of  life  and  the  light  of  truth,  is  one  of 
tliose  arms  most  lit  to  defend  the  Church,"  and — "  tlie  first  law 
of  history  is  to  dread  uttering  falsehood ;  the  next,  not  to  fear 
stating  the  truth  ;  the  last,  that  the  historian's  writing  should 
be  open  to  no  suspicion  of  partiality  or  of  animosity."  One  is 
reminded  of  the  apostrophe  of  Lecky,  the  historian  of  Ration- 
alism, to  the  grandeur  of  St.  Peter's  at  Home  :  "  There  lie  those 
mediiKval  Pontift's  who  had  borne  aloft  the  lamp  of  knowledge 
in  an  evil  and  benighted  age,  who  had  guided  and  controlled 
the  march  of  nations."  Is  Pope  Leo  the  first  Pope  that  furthers 
the  study  of  history — of  tlie  "  Ancient  Authors  "  'i  Let  me 
inquire  shortly  what  the  "  ('hurch  of  Rome  "  has  done  for  both. 
Protestant  Germany  is  to- day  the  leader  in  this  branch  of 
learning,  but  she  began  her  work  only  yesterday.  Fitful  at- 
tempts had  previously  been  made,  but  it  was  only  after  tlie 
great  Napoleonic  wars,  when  a  new  national  spirit  arose  among 
the  Germans,  that  the  efforts  of  Anidt  and  Grimm,  and  especially 
of  Von  Stein,  were  crowned  with  success.  Not  till  1819  was 
it  possible  to  found  the  society  for  the  study  of  Old  German 
History.  Pertz  was  the  leading  spirit,  and  his  great  work,  the 
^'■Jfonu/iienta  "  represents  the  high-water  mark  of  even  German 
self-sacrifice,  learning,  judgment  and  vigor  in  the  lOtli  century 
in  this  department.  But  the  "  Church  of  Rome  "  helped  him 
in  his  work.  He  visited  Rome  on  his  first  journey  of  research 
in  1820  and  AVattenbach  says  "he  received  from  the  Papal 
Regesta  alone  1800  unprinted  documents."  Kennicott,  the  re- 
nowned Oxford  Hebrew  Biblical  scholar,  had  been  treated  in 
the  same  way,  as  he  so  cordially  acknowledges  in  his  letters. 
Now,  up  to  the  time  of  Pertz  nothing  had  been  done  by  Prot- 
estants (I  do  not  forget  the  good  Leibnitz's  work)  that  could  be 
at  all  compared  with  the  great  historical  collections  undertaken 
and  carried  out  by  Catholics.  The  "  Church  of  Rome  "  was 
the  leader  in  the  cause  of  historical  progress.  Hear  Canon 
Stokes  on  the  matter :  "  It  was  the  existence  and  rich  endow- 
ments of  the  great  monasteries,"  says  he,  "  which  explains  the 
publication  of  such  immense  works  as  those  of  the  BoUandists, 


A  Rejoinder.  109 

Mabillon  and  Tillemont,  quite  surpassing  any  now  issued,  even 
by  the  wealthiest  pul)lishers  among  ourselves,  and  only  ap- 
proached, and  that  at  a  distance,  by  Pertz's  '  Monunienta '  in 
Germany."  Surely  this  is  glory  enough,  but  it  is  not  all.  Let 
me  untwist  for  your  readers  this  quotation  from  this  Anglican 
scholar.  The  Church  of  England  has  many  such  at  home,  but 
she  sends  curious  specimens  to  the  Colonies  now  and  tlien. 

One  of  the  most  gigantic  historical  works  ever  undertaken 
was  the  Acta  Sanctorum  of  a  company  of  Flemish  Jesuits, 
called  Eollandists  from  their  founder,  John  13olland.  "  Their 
majestic  tomes,"  says  Canon  Stokes,  "  stand  as  everlasting  pro- 
tests on  behalf  of  real  and  learned  inquiry,  of  accurate,  pains- 
taking and  most  critical  research  into  the  sources  whence  his- 
tory, if  worth  anything,  must  be  drawn."  During  this  cen- 
tury, the  Belgian  Jesuits  considered  it  a  matter  of  honor  to 
continue  and  complete  the  vast  work  begun  by  their  brethren 
of  old,  and  the  whole  work  published  to  the  present  time  num- 
bers sixty-four  folio  volumes.  They  include  a  great  part  of 
the  history  of  the  world  since  the  establishment  of  Christianity. 
"  I  regard  the  Acta  Sanctorum,''^  says  Prof.  Stokes,  "as  especi- 
ally valuable  for  Medioeval  history,  secular  as  well  as  ecclesias- 
tical, simply  because  the  authors,  having  had  unrivalled  o]jpor- 
tunities  of  obtaining  and  copying  documents,  printed  their 
authorities  as  they  found  them,  and  thus  preserved  for  us  a 
mine  of  historical  material  which  otherwise  would  have  perished 
in  the  French  revolution  and  its  subsequent  wars."  He  may 
well  express  his  surprise  that  "  neither  of  our  own  great  histo- 
rians who  have  dealt  with  the  middle  ages,  Gibbon  and  Hallam, 
has,  as  far  as  we  have  been  able  to  discover,  ever  consulted 
them."  To  prove  how  valuable  the  mine  is.  Prof.  Stokes  cites 
the  titles  of  some  of  the  critical  treatises  in  the  work.  Of  the 
honesty  of  the  Eollandists,  which,  according  to  Pope  Leo,  is 
the  essential  condition,  the  first,  second,  and  third  law  of  all 
history.  Canon  Stokes  says :  "■  This  much  any  fair  mind  will 
allow :  The  Society  of  Jesus,  since  the  days  of  Pascal  and  the 
Provincial  Letters,  has  been  regarded  as  a  synonym  of  dishon- 
esty and  fraud.  From  any  such  charge  the  student  of  the  Acta 
Sanctortim  must  regard  the  Eollandists  as  free We  find 


170  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

in  them  thorough  loyalty  to  historical  truth  ;  they  deal  in  no 
suppression  of  evidence ;  they  give  every  side  of  the  question. 
They  write  like  men  who  feel,  as  Bollundus  their  founder  did, 
that  under  no  circumstances  is  it  riqht  to  lie.  They  never  lies- 
itate  to  avow  their  own  convictions  and  i)redilections ;  they  draw 
their  own  conclusions  and  put  their  own  gloss  upon  fact  and 
document ;  but  they  give  the  documents  as  they  found  them." 
In  my  first  quotation  from  Canon  Stokes  he  mentioned  the  name 
of  Mabillon.  What  glorious  memories  it  evokes !  Vet  he  was 
but  one  of  the  fifteen  thousand  writers  produced  by  the  Order 
of  St.  Benedict.  It  would  require  a  whole  letter  to  speak  at 
all  adequately  of  the  works  of  the  French  Benedictine  monks 
of  St.  Maur  alone.  On  the  same  plane  as  the  great  Jesuit 
work,  Wattcnbach  places  their  Acta  Sanctorum  Ordinis  S. 
Benedicti  in  nine  large  folios  which  he  says  "  are  of  the  utmost 
importance  to  histoi-y." 

Again  he  says :  "  After  these  industrious  and  learned  monks 
liad  rendered  the  most  extraordinary  services  to  the  Itistory  of 
their  order  and  the  church,  and  in  various  collections  had  made 
accessible  unlimited  historical  material,  they  began  in  1*38  to 
publish  the  Becueil  des  Illstoi'lens  des  Gaules  et  dc  la  France 
by  Dom  Bouquet  and  his  successors,  a  collection  the  publication 
of  which  has  been  taken  up  quite  recently,  and  now  consists  of 
tioenty-one folio  volumes.''''  I  cannot  stay  to  speak  of  Ughclli, 
Baronius,  Paperoch,  Tillemont,  d'Achery,  Germain,  Ruinart, 
the  brothers  Fez,  or  Father  Muraton.  Of  the  last  writer  Wat- 
tcnbach says :  "  Ilis  Scriptores  Iteruin  Italicarum.,  in  tiventy- 
one  folio  volumes,  ^VQ  the  first  comprehensive  systematic  col- 
lection of  the  documentary  history  of  any  country,  and  to  this 
day  the  only  one  which  has  reached  completion."  To  publish 
his  vast  collection,  48  volumes  in  all,  several  princes  and  nobles 
of  Italy  subscribed  $4-,000  each.  Again  Wattenbach  says : 
"The  history  of  the  Roman  Church,  written  by  Cardinal  Bar- 
onius, embraced  the  whole  Christian  world,  and  in  it  every 
nation  found  the  most  important  information  regarding  its  own 
past  from  the  treasures  of  the  Vatican  Archives." 

I  cannot  more  fitly  sum  up  this  part  of  my  reflections  than 
in  the  words  of   Matthew  Arnold,  our  great  critic,  recently 


A    ItEJOINDKK.  171 

(leiul.  Speaking  of  the  great  library  of  England,  he  says: 
"  In  spite  of  all  the  shocks  which  the  feeling  of  a  good  Catho- 
lic has  in  this  Protestant  conntrv  inevitably  to  underjro,  in 
spite  of  the  contemptuous  insensibility  to  the  grandeiu*  of 
lionie  which  he  finds  so  general  and  so  hard  to  bear,  how  iiuich 
has  he  to  console  him,  how  many  acts  of  homage  to  the  great- 
ness of  his  religion  may  he  see,  if  he  has  his  eyes  open.  I  will 
tell  hiiu  one  of  them.  Let  him  go,  in  London,  to  that  delight- 
ful spot  ....  the  reading-room  of  the  British  Museum.  Let 
him  visit  its  sacred  quarter,  the  region  where  its  theological 

books  are  placed He  will    tind  an   immense  Catholic 

work  ....  lording  it  over  that  wliole  region,  reducing  to  in- 
significance the  feeble  Protestant  forces  which  hang  upon  its 
skirts.  Protestantism  is  duly  represented,  indeed ;  Mr.  Panizzi 
knows  his  business  too  well  to  suffer  it  to  be  otherwise ;  all 
the  varieties  of  Protestantism  are  there ;  there  is  the  library  of 
Anglo-Catholic  Theology,  learned,  decorous,  exemplary,  but  a 
Huh'  imlntcrcfttiiHj;  there  are  the  works  of  Calvin,  rigid,  mili- 
tant, menacing;  there  arc  the  works  of  Ur.  Chalmers,  the 
Scotch  Thistle,  valiantly  doing  duty  as  the  Hose  of  Sharon,  but 
keeping  something  very  Scotch  about  it  all  the  time;  there  are 
the  works  of  Dr.  Channing,  the  last  word  of  religious  philos- 
ophy in  a  land  where  every  one  has  some  culture,  and  where 
superiorities  are  discountenanced — the  flower  of  moral  and  in- 
telligent mediocrity.  Bat  how  arc  all  these  divided  against 
one  another,  and  how,  though  they  were  all  united,  are  theij 
dwarfed  hy  the  Catholic  Leviathan,  their  neighbor  ?  Majestic 
in  its  blue  and  gold  unity,  this  fills  shelf  after  shelf  and  com- 
partment  after  compartment,  its  right  mounting  up  into  heaven 
among  the  white  folios  of  the  Acta  Sanctorum.,  its  left  plung- 
ing down  into  hell  among  the  yellow  octavos  of  the  Law 
Digest.  Everything  is  there,  in  that  immense  Patrologim 
Carsus  Completus,  in  that  Encyclopedie  Theologique,  that 
Nouvelle  Encyclopedie  Theologique,  that  Troisieine  Encyclo- 
pedie Theologique ;  religion,  philosophy,  history,  1)iography, 
arts,  sciences,  IJibliography,  gossip.  The  work  embraces  the 
whole  range  of  human  interests  ;  like  one  of  the  great  ]\Iiddle 
Age  Cathedrals,  it  is  m  itself  a  study  for  a  life.     Like  the  net 


172  Il'8K,    Il'SA,    Il'8UM. 

in  Scripture,  it  dra<^  everytliing  to  land,  bii'l  and  good,  lay  and 
ecclesiastical,  sacred  and  i)rofane,  so  that  it  he  hut  matter  of 
liunuin  concern.  Wide-enihracing  as  the  ])o\ver  whose  i)roduct 
it  is!  A  power,  for  history,  at  any  rate,  eminently  the 
cuuKcii."    How  heautiful !     How  true  1 


LETTER  XII. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IPSUM — A   KEJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

SiK, — In  my  last  letter  I  considered  the  world's  debt  to  the 
"Church  of  Rome"  and  her  sons  for  their  labors  to  promote 
liistorical  science.  I  wish  shortly  to  contrast  these  with  the 
spirit  of  the  Church  of  England  and  her  sons — the  Vicar's 
theological  progenitors.  The  closing  words  of  his  "  Strictures  " 
are  these:  "May  the  God  of  Truth  in  His  mercy  hasten  the 
time"  when  "we  shall  behold  a  disastrous  collapse  for  the 
Roman  Church  of  her  extensive  and  expensive  ])lant  in  the 
(jood  old  Countnj.''^  Xow  the  unctions  piety  of  this  de- 
sjiondent  and  despairing  ejaculation  does  not  redeem  its  blaa- 
phoiny,  as  your  readers  will  presently  confess.  History  indeed 
may  repeat  itself,  for  John  Bull  is  a  vagarious  sort  of  fellow, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  theological  huU-ies  who  now  and  then 
escape  from  his  shores.  The  "good  old  country"  once  had  a 
good  deal  of  "expensive  plant"  belonging  to  the  "Roman 
Church."  The  "plant"  ?«a.s  "expensive  "  because  it  was  the 
coinage  of  the  very  life-blood  of  men  who  had  pledged 
their  thought  and  power,  and  had  consecrated  their  lives  to  the 
promotion  of  the  knowledge  and  love  of  the  God  of  Truth,  and 
the  happiness  and  well-being  of  their  fellows.  Let  us  inquire 
what  the  Church  of  England  and  her  sons  of  this  "good  old 
country  "  did  with  this  "  plant."  My  authorities,  remember, 
all  through,  are  Protestants,  not  "Si.  Liguori"  or  "the  Rac- 
colta  " — these  will  come  by  and  by. 

Before  the  brutal  lust  of  Henry  YIIL  begat  Anglicanism, 


A  Hejoinuer.  173 

many  monasteries,  those  historic  homes  of  great  learning  a'ul 
greater  virtue,  existetl  in  England.  They  all  had  their 
libraries.  In  those  of  the  greater  monasteries  were  deposited 
the  Acts  of  Parliament  after  the  coming  of  the  Normans ; 
and  under  the  English  Saxons  the  ])rincipal  decrees  of  the 
Witenagemote  and  Gemote.  In  several  monasteries  Registers 
of  the  Kings  and  public  transactions  were  compiled  and  pre- 
served, so)ne  of  which  we  f(jrtuimtely  have,  as  the  Saxon  annals 
or  chronicles,  published  by  Gibson  at  Oxford  in  1('>92.  From 
such  monastic  chronicles  Florence  of  Worcester  and  William 
of  Malniesbury,  declare  they  compiled  their  histories.  The 
destruction  of  these  momnuents  are  an  irreparable  loss  to 
English  history.  Tyrell,  in  his  "  History  of  England,"  p.  15*2, 
says :  "  From  the  conversion  of  the  Saxons  most  of  the  laws 
made  in  the  Witenagemote,  or  great  Councils,  were  carefully 
preserved,  and  would  have  been  conveyed  to  us  more  entire, 
liad  it  not  been  for  the  loss  of  so  many  curious  monuments  of 
antiquity  at  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries,  in  the  reign  of 
Henry  VIII."  But  worse  than  that.  Fanaticism  and  more 
than  vandal  rage  did  not  even  spare  the  libraries  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  especially  the  two  most  noble  public  libraries  at 
Oxford,  the  one  founded  by  Richard  of  Burg,  or  Richard 
Aungerville,  Lord -treasurer  of  England  and  Bishop  of  Durham, 
in  the  reign  of  Edward  III.,  who  spared  no  pains  or  cost  tr 
make  this  collection  complete ;  the  other,  furnished  with  books 
by  Thomas  Cobliam,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  in  1367,  and  exceed- 
ingly augmented  by  King  Henry  lY.,  his  sons,  and  by  the 
addition  of  the  celebiated  library  of  the  Duke  of  Gloucester, 
filled  with  curious  manuscripts  brought,  at  any  price,  from 
foreign  countries.  Read  the  words  of  Chamberlain  in  his 
work  entitled  " Present  State  of  England"  part  3,  p.  450  : 
"  These  men,"  says  he,  "  under  pretence  of  rooting  out  Popery, 
superstition,  and  idolatry,  utterly  destroyed  these  two  noble 
libraries,  and  embezzled,  sold,  burnt,  or  tore  in  pieces  all  those 
valuable  books  which  these  great  patrons  of  learning  had  been 
so  diligent  in  procuring  in  every  country  of  Europe.  Nay, 
their  fury  was  so  successful  as  to  the  Aungerville  library,  which 
was  the  oldest,  largest,  and  choicest,  that  we  have  not  so  much 


171  Ii'SK,  Ipsa,  Ii-sum. 

as  a  catalogue  of  tlie  books  left.  N^or  did  they  rest  hero.  They 
visited  likewise  the  college-lil)raries,  and  one  may  guess  at  the 
work  they  made  with  them,  by  a  letter  still  kept  in  the  Ar- 
chives, where  one  of  them  boasts  that  New  College  qnadratigle 
was  all  covered  with  the  leaves  of  their  torn  books.  The  Uni- 
versity thought  fit  to  complain  to  the  government  of  this  bar- 
I  barity  and  covetousness  of  the  visitors,  but  could  not  get  any 
more  than  one  single  book  ....  and  to  this  day  there  is  no 
book  in  the  Bodleian  Library  besides  this  and  two  more  which 
are  certainly  known  to  have  belonged  to  either  of  the  former 
libraries.  Nay,  and  the  University  itself,  despairing  ever  to 
enjoy  any  other  public  library,  thought  it  advisable  t.^  disj^ose 
of  the  very  desks  and  shelves  the  books  stood  on  in  the  year 
1555." '  The  time  was  certainly  not  auspicious  for  Roman 
"  plant."  Your  readers  had  a  glimpse  at  what  the  "  Church  of 
Rome  "  did — "  Look  here  on  this  picture  and  on  that^ 

Hitherto  I  have  discussed  the  quantltive  aspect  of  the  his- 
torical work  of  the  "Church  of  Home"  among  the  "Ancient 
Authors."  There  remains  now  to  consider  the  qnalH])  of  that 
work — the  value  of  those  materials,  in  amassing  which  her  sons 
led  lives  of  ceaseless,  unwearied  toil,  as  tested  by  historical 
criticism.  Here  they  have  pushed  erudition  to  the  very  point 
of  genius.  ^^'  historical  criticism  I  mean  the  probing  of  his- 
torical tc^ .-  aony ;  its  acceptance,  if  found  to  be  true,  no  mat- 
ter how  contrary  to  the  historian's  sympathies;  its  rejection,  if 
false,  no  matter  how  strongly  it  favored  his  views  and  theories. 
To  probe  historical  testimony  is  to  inijuire  whether  documents 
are  genuine  or  spurious,  whether  the  witnesses  are  partial  or 
unprejudiced,  whether  the  facts  harmonize  with  or  contradict 
other  ascertained  facts.  .N')W  your  readers  will  remend)er  my 
quotation  from  Whitaker,  an  Anglican  minister  and  historian. 


'  Read  Mr.  Gladstone's  burnino^  words  on  tliis  satanioally-inspirctt 
vandalism.  In  liis  article  On  Bookstand  the  Housing  of  ihem,  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century.  Mardi,  1890,  he  says  :  "Oxford  had  .... 
i-eceived  noble  {jifts  for  her  University  Lil)rary.  And  we  have  to 
recollect  with  shanio  and  indiijnation  tliat  that  institution  was  ])luu- 
dered  and  destroyed  by  the  Coninussioners  of  the  boy  king,  Edward 
the  Sixth,  acting  in  the  name  of  the  Reformation  of  Rehgion." 


A    liEJOIXDKR.  175 

wlio  says:  ''Forgery — I  blnsli  for  the  honor  of  Protestants 
while  I  write  it — seems  to  liave  been  peculiar  to  the  Tieforni- 
er.?."     According  to  Littledale  this  nnist  be  true,  but  I  think  it 

4.,,.   „., ,,: T.,   i.1.:.,  a...i,,      M    .. •'  ji        i -,.,  i    ii        i'   ^ 

luu  n\Vc;eJ»iiig.      xii  tiiir-       \iiieui    lUciis      luc;    iruu  iliui    iiiu   iui^e 

will  ever  move  along  together,  as  a  body  and  its  shadow.  There 
are  always  realities,  there  are  always  shams — tributes  to  the 
real  thiny-s.  For^-eries  arc  committed  to-dav — it  was  so  in  the 
])ast,  and  it  will  be  so  in  the  future  while  Imman  nature  re- 
mains as  it  is,  Tu  historical  work,  which  is  based  so  largely  on 
the  study  of  documents,  public  and  private,  state  and  ecclesias- 
tical, much  depends  on  the  character  of  these  documents,  or 
diplomas,  as  they  were  called.  T/ie  '•^Church  of'  Jiome^^  stands 
to-daij  u/iKjuaNed  la  the  whole  science  of  P((/eof/mj)h//,  Greek 
and  Latin.  The  world  lias  nothing  to  compare  with  the 
treatises  written  by  her  sons  to  establish  the  true  principles  for 
distinguishing  genuine  from  forged  documents.  My  authority 
is  the  Eneyeloj)a'xlia  Brltannica,  not  by  any  means  partial  to 
her.  I  i-efer  your  readers  to  A^ol.  7,  Art.  "  Diplomatics,"  and  Vul. 
18,  Art.  "  Pala30graphy."  The  immortal  Pope,  Innocent  III. 
(1195-1210),  issued  a  decretal  laying  down  rules  for  detecting 
forged  bulls.  In  1075  Paperoch,  the  illustrious  Eollandist 
Jesuit,  wrote  his  Propylaeum  AnthiiuD'ium  circa  veri  etc  falsi 
discrimen  in  vetustis  wemhranis,  freely  translated — " The 
Anti(p;ary's  Introduction  to  the  art  of  distinguishing  the  true 
from  the  false  in  old  manuscripts."  Your  r  ^.ers  will  not 
have  forgotten  Canon  Stokes'  testimony  to  ti:c  "ha.acter  of  i'le 
Bollandists.  With  a  view  to  establish  the  credit  of  those  docu- 
ments preserved  in  the  original,  the  Benedictine  Monk,  Ma- 
billon,  in  the  year  lOSl,  produced  his  masterly  work,  called 
by  Magliabe(!hi  an  '"  immortal  book,"  J)e  lie  Dijiloniatica — 
on  "Diplomatics."  In  1750-1705  appeared  the  JVoiiveau 
Traite  de  Diplomatique  by  Dom  Toustain  and  Dom  Tassin, 
Benedictine  Monks  of  St.  Maur,  0  vols.,  cpiarto,  treating  of  the 
whole  subject  of  Diplomas,  and  accordingly  entering  at  lengtli. 
into  a  minute  investigation  of  the  j)eculiarities  and  character- 
istics of  writing  proper  to  diiferent  ages  and  countries.  Hear 
the  Jiritaniiica :  "The  bibliography  of  Latin  paleography  in 
its  different  branches  is  very  extensive,  but  there  are  compara. 


176  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

lively  few  books  which  deal  with  it  as  a  whole.  The  most  com- 
plete work  is  due  to  the  Benedictines,  who  in  1750-1765  pro- 
duced the  Nouvcau  Traite  de  Diplomatique,  which  ex- 
amines the  remains  of  Latin  writing  in  the  most  exhaustive 

manner As  their  title   shows,  they   did    not  confine 

themselves  to  the  study  of  MS.  volumes,  but  dealt  also  with 
that  other  branch  of  paleography,  the  study  of  documents,  in 
whicli  they  liad  been  preceded  by  JMabillon  in  his  De  De  Dip- 
lomatlcaP  In  these  monumental  works  the  Benedictine 
Monks,  therefore,  not  only  laid  the  foundation  of  the  critical 
study  of  Latin  historical  documents  but  almost  brought  it  to 
l)ei'fection.  They  classified  the  writings  of  different  ])eriods 
and  countries,  thus  establishing  external  tests  of  the  genuine- 
ness of  manuscripts,  and  founding  the  science  of  Latin  Paleo- 
graphy. By  minute  study  and  careful  analysis  they  also  estab- 
lished and  sot  down  many  internal  criteria,  such  as  the  wording 
of  titles,  the  value  of  geographical  terms  at  different  times,  and 
contemporary  chronology,  which  are  in  some  ways  even  more 
certain  and  more  serviceable  than  the  external  tests.  These 
latter  are  dealt  with  in  the  science  of  Diplomatics. 

But  the  Jjenedictines  were  not  satisfied  with  these  achieve- 
ments. AVhat  ]\[al)illon,  Toustain  and  Tassin  did  for  Latin 
documents  and  Paleography,  that  the  great  Montfaucou  did 
for  Greek.  "  The  first  book,"  says  the  Britannica,  "  wdn'ch 
dealt  with  the  subject  in  a  systematic  manner  was  the  Palae- 
o(jraphla  Gvaeca  of  the  learned  Benedictine  Dom  Bernard 
Montfaucou,  published  in  1708.  So  thoroughly  well  was  the 
work  done,  that  down  to  our  time  no  other  scholar  attempted 
to  improve  ujxm  it,  and  Montfaucou  remained  the  undisputed 
authority  on  this  branch  of  learning."  To-day  a  distinguished 
German  Pn)testant,  GardthauHen,  is  trying  to  improve  upon 
Montfaucou.  He  says:  ''^The  Palaeogycqdiia  Gvaeca  is  and 
will  remain  one  of  the  most  remarkable  achievements  by  which 
a  new  science  was  not  only  founded,  but,  as  it  seemed,  also 
perfected.  It  is  the  more  remarkable,  as  Montfaucou  had  no 
one  to  precede  him,  but  created  everything  from  notiiing." 

Again  :    Dates   suj)ply   most   useful  -r.  id   reliable  ways  of 
checking  historical  docunients.    Hence  tlie  importance  for  pur- 


A  Rejoin DEK.  177 

poses  of  historical  criticism  of  a  sound,  detailed  and  systematic 
Chronology.  The  father  of  Chronology  was  Joseph  Scaliger, 
a  Protestant,  who  in  1583  published  his  work,  De  Emenda- 
tione  Temporum,  on  the  "Correction  of  Time."  He  soon 
found  not  only  critics  but  fellow-workers  in  the  learned  Jesuits 
Sirmond,  Labbe  and  Petavius,  whose  book  on  Chronology 
appeared  in  1627,  and  remained  as  authority  for  a  long  time. 
But  in  1750  was  published  "the  first  edition  in  one  volume, 
quarto,  of  L Art  de  Verifier  les  Dates — 'The  Art  of  Verify- 
ing Dates,'  which  in  its  third  edition  (1818-1831)  appeared  in 
38  volumes,  8vo,  a  colossal  monument  of  the  learning  and 
labors  of  various  members  of  the  Benedictine  Congregation  of 
St.  Maur."     Encyc.  JBritannica,  vol.  5,  Art.  "  Chronology.'' 

[Let  me  complete  the  above  sketch  of  the  labors  of  Catholic 
scholars  in  the  interests  of  truth,  with  the  name  of  Cardinal 
Mai.  He  was  the  most  consummate  critic,  in  our  time,  of 
ancient  texts  and  MSS.,  and  his  splendid  labors  attracted  the 
attention  and  admiration  of  all  E  ^ope.  His  sagacity  and 
genius  in  deciphering  Palimpsest  MSS.  were  supreme,  and 
liave  never  been  equalled.  His  merits  in  tliis  particular  were 
Iieartily  recognized  by  the  best  scholarship  of  England;  for,  a 
few  years  before  his  death  (1854:),  a  gold  medal  was  there 
struck  in  his  honor,  bearing  the  following  inscription  :  "  An- 
(jelo  Malo,  PaUmjysestprum  Inventori  atque  Restauratori — 
To  Angelo  Mai,  the  discoverer  and  restorer  of  Palimpsest 
MSS."] 

Now  here  I  intend  to  say  a  word  on  two  famous  documents 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  Donatio  Constantini — the  "  Donatian 
of  Constantine,"  and  the  "  Forged  Decretals "  about  which, 
copying  Littledale,  the  Vicar  made  some  noise,  and  to  which  I 
have  already  referred  in  this  Rejoinder.  We  have  just  seen 
how  the  Jesuits  and  Benedictines  vied  with  each  other  in  pro- 
viding tools  for  the  critical  historians.  But  long  before  Pape- 
roch  and  Mabillon,  long  before  Tassin,  Petavius,  and  Dom 
Clement,  the  principal  compiler  of  "The  Art  of  verifying 
Dates,"  Catholic  scholars  had  given  proof  that  they  possessed 
both  the  keenness,  the  learning  and  the  impartial  love  of  truth 
M'hieh  distinguishes  the  true  critic.     Perhaps  I  can  give  no 


178  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

better  proof  of  this  shortly,  tlian  the  story  of  the  two  docu- 
ments above.  On  the  lirst,  many  mediaeval  writers  based  the 
temporal  jiower  of  the  Pope,  while  tlie  second  was  used  to 
fortify  many  other  papal  rights.  But  scarcely  had  the  llenais- 
sance  set  in,  scarcely  had  the  study  of  history  been  reawakened, 
when  Catholic  historians  and  scholars,  churchmen,  too,  nay 
Bishops  and  Cardinals,  began  to  doubt  the  genuineness  of 
these  two  important  documents,  and  fiiuxlly  condemned  them 
as  spurious.  It  is  well  known  that  Laurentius  Yalla  condenmed 
the  Donatio  Constcuitini  in  unmeasured  terms.  "  Doubts  of 
the  genuineness  of  this  Document "  says  Prof.  L.  Pastor,  "  had 
been  expressed  years  before  Valla  by  the  learned  Nicholas  of 
Cusa  in  his  Catholic  Co7icor dance.  Independently  of  Yalla 
and  Cusa,  Reginald  Pecock,  Bishop  of  Chichester,  showed  after 
careful  examination  of  the  historical  testimony,  the  impossi- 
bility of  upholding  this  document  so  long  looked  upon  as 
genuine.  In  1443  Silvio  Piccolomini,  afterwards  Pope  Pius 
II.,  urged  Frederick  III.  to  bring  the  question  of  the  Donation 
of  Constantino  before  a  Council."  As  to  the  False  Decretals, 
the  Popes  have  often  been  accused  of  having  had  them  com- 
piled and  partly  forged  to  back  up  some  of  their  pretensions. 
It  is  now  estabhshed  that  this  collection  was  made  in  the 
Prankish  Empire  between  the  years  852-7.  The  then  reigning 
Pope,  Nicholas  I.,  did  not  so  much  as  know  of  its  existence 
till  804.  Subsequently  for  several  centuries  this  forgery  was 
looked  upon  as  genuine ;  but  even  during  the  "  dark  '■  ages, 
long  before  Luther,  Petrus  Comestor,  in  the  twelfth  century, 
doubted  its  authenticity.  In  1324  Marsilius  of  Padua  pro- 
nounced it  a  forgery,  and  in  the  fifteenth  century  its  genuine- 
ness was  not  admitted  by  Persona,  Kalteisen,  Cardinal  Cusa, 
and  John  of  Turrecemata.  [These  are  crucial  facts.  Two 
documents,  supposed  to  support  strongly  certain  Papal  claims, 
one  a  forgery  which  imposed  upon  the  Jesuit  Turrianus  even 
in  1573,  were  rejected  by  the  critics  of  the  Middle  Ages,  most 
of  them  ])riests  and  bishops,  before  the  schism  of  Luther,  and, 
therefore,  solely  in  the  interest  of  truth.']  See  Hergenrother, 
"  anti-Janus,"  and  Prof.  Ilerbermann,  A.  C.  Q.  Review,  April, 
1888. 


A  Rejoixdeu.  179 

I  trust  I  have  now  eviscerated  the  Vicar's  "  thesaurus  "  on 
*'foro;eries  and  falsifications"  of  the  "Church  of  lionie"  and 
to  the  satisfaction  of  your  readers.  When  next  tliey  meet  him 
with  a  yard  stick  in  one  hand  and  the  "  critical  apparatus  " 
in  tlie  other,  and  hear  him  talk  of  "sifting  the  evidence"  of 
Iloman  quotations  from  the  "  ancient  authors  "  they  can  "  hold 
their  sides."  Your  readers,  however,  may  justly  complain  of 
the  length  of  this  licjo'inihr^  but  when  they  consider  the 
space  I  am  obliged  to  occupy  in  refutation  of  so  miserable  a 
statement  as  that  with  which  I  have  just  been  dealing,  I  can 
fairlj-  claim  their  indulgence.  I  have  felt  obliged  to  track  him, 
step  by  step,  through  his  irrelevant  ravings,  for  the  sake  of  the 
"  Clod  of  Truth  "  and  His  little  ones.  In  my  next  we  will  get 
nearer  to  the  question  which  he  did  his  little  best  to  befog — if, 
indeed,  he  is  responsible  at  all. 


LETTER  XIII. 


IPSE,   IPSA,   IPSUM — A  REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  continue  my  critique  on  the  Vicar's  sixth  letter.  He 
says  :  "  I  now  pass  to  the  consideration  of  my  opponent's  re- 
marks on  the  Papal  Decree  of  the  Immaculate  Conception." 
Your  readers  will  remember  that  in  my  Rfsumt  I  was  led 
to  consider  the  "  Papal  Decree  " — the  Bull  Ineffai!Ilis — on  the 
Immacidate  Conception  by  the  Vicar's  statement  "  that  Pius 
IX.  when  promulgating  the  dogma  ....  alluded  for  its  de- 
fence to  this  very  text"  (Genesis  iii.  15),  and  by  Bishop  King- 
don's  assertion  "that  the  mistake  Ipsa  for  Ipse  had  acquired  a 
tremendous  importance  from  being  quoted  in  the  promulgation 
of  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  by  Pius  IX. "  I 
have  already  so  fully  disposed  of  both  of  these  silly  and  igno- 
rant utterances  that  there  is  nothing  to  add  in  the  nature  of 
argument ;  but  a  little  expansion  here  will  the  better  enable 


180  Ipse,  Ipjja,  Ipsum. 

the  ordinary  reader  to  take  in  the  ineptnese  and  imbecility  of 
the  Vicar  when  he  lets  go  the  hands  of  Pusey  and  Littledale 
and  attempts  to  step  alone.  The  exhibition  is  indeed  a  sorry 
one. 

It  was  quite  evident  from  the  Vicar's  statement  and  that  of 
the  Bishop,  anent  the  "  Decree,"  that  they  had  never  read  it ; 
but  the  Vicar  now  comes  into  court  and  confesses  it.  "  I  have 
not  a  copy  of  the  Bull  Inkffabilis,"  he  says,  "  but  I  possess  a 
long  extract  in  English  by  Dr.  Pusey."  This  is  pretty  good, 
but  only  characteristic  of  the  "  Priest "  (save  the  mark  !)  who 
with  audacious  "  cheek  "  and  insulting  impudence  puts  himself 
forward  as  (lualified  to  instruct  the  public  on  the  "  apostacy," 
"  infidelity  "  and  "  idolatry  "  of  the  Koman  church  !  Of  course, 
my  opponents  were  not  ohliged  to  read  the  "  Decree,"  but  then 
they  would  not  be  expected  to  know  much  about  the  "tremen- 
dous importance"  of  its  alleged  mistakes.  By  overlooking 
this  fact  they  have  brought  upon  themselves  the  shame  and 
humiliation  that  covers  them  to-day.  May  the  "  peiiance " 
chasten  their  love  (!)  for  the  Koman  "branch"  of  their  ideal 
Church  Universal  1 

I  give  again  for  convenience  and  point  Genesis  iii.  15 :  "I 
will  put  enmities  between  thee  and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed 
and  her  seed ;  he  {she  or  it)  shall  crush  thy  head,  &c."  This 
celebrated  text  is  divided  into  two  parts :  the  first  of  which 
declares  that  God  will  place  a  barrier  of  enmity  between  the 
serpent  and  the  woman,  between  his  seed  and  her  seed  ;  and  the 
second  expresses  the  consequences  that  should  result  from  this 
enmity,  namely,  the  crushing  of  the  serpent's  head.  I  put,  in 
the  second  clause,  the  three  received  readings  that  your  readers 
may  see  that  ^'■Ipsa — she  "  has  absolutely  no  weight  or  bearing 
on  the  promulgation  of  the  "  Decree  "  on  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception, or  on  the  doctrine  itself,  and  that  its  "  tremendous  im- 
portance "  is  only  a  figment  of  a  badly  diseased  anti-Roman 
episcopal  imagination.  By  all  three  renderings,  as  I  have  so 
frequently  proved.  Catholics  understand,  admi't  and  assert  that 
the  agent  in  crushing  the  serpent's  head  is  the  seed  of  the 
woman,  our  Lord  and  Saviour,  Jesus  Christ.  Hitherto,  I  have 
considered  the  Vicar's  imbecility  as  the  offspring  of  nialevo- 


A  Eejoinder.  181 

lence,  but  I  will  now  prove  that  it  is  congenital.  He  is  as  blind 
as  a  bat  and  has  actually  put  himself  and  the  Bishop  out  of 
court.    Let  your  readers  follow  me  sharply  here. 

In  my  Resume  I  said,  that  the  Jirst  clause  of  our  text  was  quoted 
t^oicem  the  "Decree"  and  verhatim,  while  t\\e  second  clause  was 
only  "  referred  to  indirectly,  and  the  idea  expressed  paraphras- 
tically  "  with  the  meaning  already  fully  explained.  I  did  not 
say  whether  it  was  so  referred  to  once  or  twice  as  the  Vicar 
impudently  asserts,  but  to  teach  him  a  lesson  in  fearless  honesty 
in  dealing  with  religious  topics,  I  gave  him  (what  he  could  not 
get  from  Pusey)  the  original  I^atin,  with  a  translation,  of  the 
strongest  language  in  his  favor  in  the  "  Decree."  Yet  he  says : 
"  I  hope  he  is  not  suppressing  anything ! "  Why  did  he  not  get 
the  "  Decree  "  and  read  it  before  "  rushing  into  print "  \  Be- 
sides, as  "  Xothing  ^jood  can  come  out  of  Nazareth,"  he  surely 
owed  it  to  your  readers  to  "  verify  "  the  quotations  of  one  so 
"thoroughly  Jesuitical"  as  he  charges  me  with  being.  I  gave 
the  two  quotations  from  the  12th  and  17th  sectioTis  of  the  decree 
as  follows :  "  But  (God)  also  raised  in  a  wonderful  manner  the 
hopes  of  our  race  when  he  said — '  I  will  put  enmities  between 
thee  and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed  and  her  seed.'  They  (the 
Fathers)  have  taught  that  in  this  divine  declaration  was  clearly 
and  plainly  showed  forth  the  merciful  Redeemer  of  the  human 
race — namely,  Jesus  Christ;"  again,  the  17th  section:  "Then, 
too,  they  (the  Fathers)  published  their  belief  ....  that  her 
(the  Blessed  Virgin's)  coming  was  foretold  by  God  himself  on 
the  occasion  when  He  said  to  the  serpent — '  I  will  put  enmities 
between  thee  and  the  woman."  On  these  quotations  the  Vicar 
remarks :  "  My  opponent's  contention  is  that  because  the  text 
Genesis  iii.  15  is  not  quo.ed  in  full  in  the  two  first  instances 
(12th  and  17th  sections  of  the  Bull)  that  therefore  the  Patristic 
and  Papal  comments  thereon  have  no  reference  to  the  second 
clause."  Nonsense  1  I  was  guilty  of  no  such  stupid  "  conten- 
tion." Whv,  the  Catholic  sense  of  the  second  clause  is  in- 
eluded  in  the  comment — "  that  in  this  divine  declaration  was 
clearly  and  plainly  showed  forth  the  merciful  Redeemer  of  the 
human  race — namely,  Jesus  Christ."  How  ?  Because  He  was 
the  se^d  of  the  woman  spoken  of,  who  by  His  Divine  and 


182  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ip.sum. 

Almiglity  power  was  to  effectuate  the  result  of  tlie  de- 
clared eniTiity,  namely,  the  crushing  of  the  serpent's  head. 
AVhat  becomes  of  I].>8a  then  '\  It  is  not  thought  of  at  all  in  the 
cahnnnious  sense  of  the  Bishop  and  his  Yicar,  and  this  they 
could  have  known  had  they  riad  the  closing  words  of  the  ]2tli 
Section  immediately  after  m^  quotation,  as  follows :  "  Where- 
fore, as  Christ,  the  Mediator  between  God  and  man,  has,  by 
assuming  human  nature,  blotted  out  the  handwriting  of  the 
decree  of  condemnation  against  us,  and  as  Conqueror  fastened 
it  to  the  cross,  so,  in  like  manner,  the  most  holy  Virgin,  linked 
to  Him  in  the  closest  and  most  indissoluble  bonds,  in  union 
with  Ilini  and  through  Him  ....  has  completely  crushed 
his  head  under  her  innnaculate  heel."  Did  not  St.  Paul  express 
the  same  idea  when  he  prayed  on  behalf  of  the  Roman  Chris- 
tians— "  May  the  God  of  peace  crush  Satan  speedily  under  your 
feet  ? "  But  why  should  I  dwell  longer  on  this  \  The  Catholic 
sense  of  the  Second  clause  is  common  throughout  the  ages  of 
the  church.  Permit  me  one  lightsome  illustration.  Two  of 
the  most  illustrious  names  connnemorated  in  the  chuix'h  to-day 
are  Saints  Perpetua  and  Felioitas.  They  were  martyred  during 
the  violent  persecution  under  the  Emperor  Severus,  in  202. 
Their  "  Acts "  to  the  eve  of  martyrdom,  were  written  by  St. 
Perpetua  herself  and  we  have  them  now.  They  are  quoted  by 
Tertullian  in  his  book — "  De  anima — on  the  soul,"  ch.  55, 
Clarke's  "Ante-Nicene  Library,"  vol.  xv.  I  refer  the  Vicar  to 
the  Oxonian  editor  of  these  "  Acts  "  as  well  as  to  Dodwell  (Diss. 
Cypr.  A.  n.  8, 15).  While  imprisoned,  with  her  brother,  in  one 
of  those  horrible  ancient  Ronum  dungeons  and  doxd)tful  about 
her  fate,  St.  Perpetua  records  that  the  following  took  place : 
"  One  day  my  brother  said  to  me  :  '  Sister,  I  am  persuaded  that 
you  are  a  peculiar  favorite  of  Heaven  ;  pray  to  God  to  reveal 
to  you  whether  this  imprisonment  will  end  in  Martyrdom  or 
not,  and  acquaint  me  of  it.'  I,  knowing  God  gave  me  daily 
tokens  of  His  goodness,  answered,  full  of  confidence,  I  will 
inform  you  to-morrow !  I,  therefore,  asked  that  favor  of  God 
and  had  this  vision  :  I  siiw  a  golden  ladder  which  reached  from 
earth  to  the  heavens,  but  so  narrow  that  only  one  could  mount 
at  a  time.     To  the  two  sides  were  fastened  all  kinds  of  iron  in- 


A  Tv !■:.[( iixDEU.  183 

struiiieiits,  as  swords,  lances,  hooks  and  knives ;  so  tliat  if  any 
one  went  np  carelessly  he  was  in  groat  danger  of  having  his 
flesh  torn  by  these  weajwns.  At  the  foot  of  the  ladder  lay  a 
dragon  of  an  eiiornions  size,  who  kept  guard  to  turn  back  and 
terrify  those  that  endeavored  to  mount  it.  The  first  that  went 
up  was  Saturus,  who  was  not  apprehended  with  us,  but  volun- 
tarily surrendered  himself  afterwards  on  our  account,  When 
he  had  got  to  the  top  of  the  ladder  he  turned  towards  me  and 
said  :  '  Perpc'ua,  1  wait  for  you  ;  l)nt  take  care  lest  the  dragon 
bite  you  ! '  I  answered  :  '  In  the  name  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
he  shall  not  hurt  me  ! '  Then  the  dragon,  as  if  afraid  of  me, 
gently  lifted  his  head  from  under  tlie  ladder,  and  I,  having  got 
upon  the  first  step,  set  my  foot  itpon  h  is  head.    Thus  I  mounted 

to  the  top As  soon  as  I  had  related  t.'  my  brother  this 

vision,  we  both  conclnded  that  we  should  suffer  death."  See 
the  Benedictine  Rninart's — '■'■Acta  primorxim  martyrum  sin- 
cera  et  selecta'''' — '■^ recueil  inspire  dhin  veritable  e.y)rit  cri- 
tique ^^  says  a  learned  French  Protestant  writer.  Also  Orsi's 
"  Vindication  of  the  Acts  of  SS.  Perpetua  and  Felicitas."  St. 
Augustine  has  a  celebrated  sermon  on  this  episode  from  which 
I  will  translate  a  thought  or  two.  The  Yicar  can  "  verify  "  at 
his  leisure.  He  will  find  the  sermon,  too,  by  using  one  of  his 
"  copious  indices,"  or  perhaps  some  of  his  ''  learned  friends  " 
may  save  him  the  trouble  by  giving  him  the  reference  off-hand. 
Only  let  him  remember  it  is  not  St.  John  of  Damascus,  l)ut  St. 
Augustine.  The  saint  says :  "  The  dragon,  therefore,  was 
crushed  by  the  chaste  foot  and  the  conquering  tread  when  the 
upraised  ladder  was  pointed  out  by  which  the  blessed  Perpetua 
was  to  go  to  God.  Thus  the  head  of  the  old  serpent  which 
was  a  stumbling-block  (praecipitiinu)  to  the  falling  woman  (Eve) 
was  made  a  stepping-stone  (gradus)  to  her  (Perpetua)  who  was 
ascending."  This  sermon  of  the  great  African  Doctor  is  indeed 
a  monument  more  lasting  than  brass  erected  to  commemorate 
the  crushing  of  the  serpent's  head  by  the  pure  and  gentle  Per- 
petua. Now,  if  such  an  imagination  were  soul-stirring  to  so 
great  and  tender  a  human  heart  and  one  so  miraculously  attuned 
to  divine  harmonies  as  that  of  Augustine,  need  we  wonder  that 
he  said  such  "  excellent  things  "  of  Mary  and  that  he  clung  to 


184  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

the  reading  Ipsa  of  tlie  old  Yulgate  (as  I  have  pointed  out), 
which  expresses  the  same  idea,  but  in  a  manner  altogether  super- 
eminent  as  is  beeoniing  to  her  who  is  the  "  Chief  of  Saints/' 
Let  me  express  tlie  hope  that  when  the  Yicar  next  visits  Rome, 
and  sees  "  a  memorial  column  ....  on  the  top  of  which  stands 
a  figure  of  tlie  Blessed  Virgin  (without  the  holy  child,  mark 
you,  in  her  arms)  tramphng  the  serpent  under  foot " — let  me 
express  the  most  sympathetic  concern  and  fond  hope  that  "  this 
representation  of  the  bruising  of  the  serpent's  head  hy  the 
ivoman"  which  was  as  "common  among  Roman  Catholics  "  in 
the  days  of  St,  Perpetua  and  as  familiar  to  them  as  it  is  to-day, 
will  not  so  shock  and  paralyze  his  "true  Catholic"  feeli  igs  as 
to  prevent  his  going  to  the  Propaganda  to  purchase  a  new 
edition  of  "  an  English  copy  of  the  Raccolta,"  published  in  the 
United  States,  to  which  he  could  apply  his  yard  stick  and  the 
"  Vincentian  Canon  "  and  learn  how  it  squared  with  "  Little- 
dale's  quotations." 

Commenting  on  my  extract  from  the  17th  clause  of  the 
Decree  as  given  above,  the  Vicar  makes  the  following  sapient 
remark :  "  Is  it  not  evident  that  the  prophecy  of  the  woman's 
coming  is  in  the  second  part  of  the  text  which  contains  that 
very  corrupted  reading,  Ipsa,^^  and  he  exclaims — "What  a 
very  unsafe  guide  my  opponent  seems  to  be  to  the  understand- 
ing of  the  plainest  texts  and  comments,''  Can  your  readers 
diagnose  the  mental  condition  of  a  man  who  could  so  write  ? 
Who  is  the  seed  of  the  woman,  j^a;^  excellence,  divinely  prophe- 
sied in  the  ^r*^  part  of  the  text?  Undoubtedly  Christ.  Who 
is  the  woman,  predicted  in  the  same  part  as  the  enemy  of 
Satan,  whose  Seed  Christ  was?  Surely,  just  as  undoubtedly 
Mary.  Even  Pusey  has  to  admit  this.  Now,  what  has  Ipsa 
to  do  with  this  prophecy?     Please  tell  us,  O  Oxford  exegete ! 

Nothing  remains  of  the  Vicar's  Sixth  Letter  but  a  quotation 
from  Pusey  as  follows :  "  Dr.  Pusey  distinctly  says  (Eirenicon, 
L  108)  that  the  error  of  Gen.  iii.  15  became  the  support  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  and  gives  rise  to  the  state- 
ments in  De  Montfort  (an  influential  Roman  writer)  that  God  has 
never  made  or  formed  but  one  enmity ;  but  it  is  an  irreconcilable 
one,  which  shall  endure  and  develop  unto  the  end.     It  is  be- 


A    RWOINDER.  185 

tween  Mary,  His  worthy  Motlier,  and  the  devil ;  between  the 
children  and  the  servants  of  Mary  and  the  children  and  in- 
struments of  Lxicifer."  The  tirst  part  of  this  quotation  I  have 
long  since  disposed  of.  What  shall  I  say  of  the  seconds  It 
literally  takes  away  one's  breath.  Pusey  declares  that  this  sup- 
posed error  gave  rise  to  the  statements,  that  God  had  made  an 
enmity  between  Mary  and  the  devil,  between  her  seed 
or  children,  and  his  seed.  Good  Heaven !  Gave  rise 
to  the  statements!  Why,  the  words  are  those  of  Almighty 
God  Himself!  If  the  whole  of  the  second  clause — "//t',  {i^he 
or  it),  shall  crush  thy  head^'' — had  never  been  written,  that 
statement  would  have  been  as  plain  and  undeniable  as  it  is  now. 
It  would  have  been  equally  impossible  to  doubt  the  fact  that 
God  had  established  an  enmity  between  Mary  and  the  devil ; 
unless  one  had  preferred  to  reject  the  Bible  itself,  as  explained 
by  reason  and  universal  tradition,  rather  than  accept  it.  For 
the  Jirst  clause  of  the  verse,  at  ail  events,  is  unquestioned. 
Here  there  are  no  variations  or  various  readings.  Protestants, 
equally  with  Catholics,  admit  the  words  as  they  stand.  The 
authorized  Anglican  version  renders  the  Hebrew:  ''  I  will  put 
enmity  between  thee  and  the  Woman."  It  retains,  there- 
fore, the  force  of  the  Hebrew  article.  It  is  the  woman,  be- 
tween whom  and  the  devil,  God  declares  that  He  will  i)ut 
enmity — that  woman,  one,  that  is,  who  should  be  well  known, 
easily  recognized,  in  the  new  order  of  grace.  And  there  can 
be  no  mistake  as  to  who  is  meant.  For  it  is  that  woman, 
whose  seed  is  to  crush  the  serpent's  head.  It  must  be  IMary, 
the  Mother  of  Jesus,  and  she  alone,  to  whom  these  words  al- 
lude. And,  so,  as  every  student  of  Patristic  Theology  knows, 
the  Fathers  generally  understood  them.  St.  Irenceus  in  the 
second  century  leads  the  way  ;  though  he  gives  the  ma&culine 
reading  of  the  second  clause.  I^ot  once  oidy,  but  in  several 
places  he  explicitly  interprets  the  woman,  announced  in  the 
Protevangel  to  mean  our  blessed  Lady.  Origen  follows  Ire- 
naeus.  The  pseudo-Origen  makes  a  third  ;  St.  Epiphanius,  a 
fourth  ;  Severianus,  Bishop  of  Gabala,  a  fifth ;  the  author  of 
the  letter  De  Viro  Perfecto,  who  is  pronounced  by  Vallarsius, 
St.  Maximus  of  Turin,  a  sixth ;  Fulbert  of  Chartrain,  a  seventh  ; 


183  Ii'SE,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

and  St.  Bernard,  the  last  of  the  Fatliers,  an  eighth.  In  consc- 
(|uenee,  the  Fathers  were  accustomed  to  ascribe  "  to  tlic  Blessed 
Virgin  directly  and  personally"  what  Pusey  tells  ns  was 
"  promised  as  to  (sic)  the  Person  of  our  Lo!  1."  Cardinal  New- 
man has  demonstrated  this  assertion  from  the  writings  of  St. 
Justin,  Tertullian,  St.  Irenreus,  St.  ('yril  of  Jerusalem,  St. 
Ephraem,  St.  Epiphanius,  St.  Jerome,  St.  Peter  Crysologus, 
and  St.  Fulgentius.  See  Newman's  ^''Letter  to  Pusey^^ — an 
unexampled  piece  of  work.  How  could  a  man  of  Pusey's 
learning  and  ability,  with  any  show  of  reason  affirm  that  the 
substitution  of  "  She "  for  "  He  "  or  "  It "  gave  rise  to  the 
statement  that  God  had  never  formed  but  one  emnity ;  and 
that  was  between  Mary  and  the  devil — between  Mary's  children 
or  seed,  and  the  seed  of  the  devil  i  This  is  the  doctrine  which 
Almighty  God  Himself  has  revealed  as  the  foundation  of 
Christian  hope.  I  have  an  explanation  which  I  will  give  later 
on.  As  for  the  Vicar,  I  would  ])lead  for  mercy  with  your 
readers.  He  simply  swallowed  whole  Pusey's  assertion  without 
having  the  knowledge  necessary  to  correct  it.  He  probably, 
too,  thought  it  "  advantageous  to  our  church "  to  send  it 
around.  To  the  mind  of  a  ritualistic  "Priest"  "the  end  justi- 
fies the  means"  where  Rome  is  concerned,  all  considerations 
of  trutli  and  self-respect  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.' 


LETTER  XIV. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IP8UM— A    REJOINDER, 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe  : 

Sir, — I  begin  to-day  my  examination  of  the  Vicar's  seventh 
letter — and  last.  His  "  Strictures  "  are  certainly  not  open  to 
the  charge  of  permitting  your  readers  the  luxury  of  indulging 
the  "  fond  imagination  "  that — 

This  honest  creature,  doubtless 
Sees  and  knows  more,  mucli  more,  than  he  unfolds. 


See  Father  Harper,  1.  c,  p.  346. 


•   A  Rejoindke.  187 

In  his  sixth  letter  he  told  us  he  was  "  becoming  convinced  " 
of  the  "  tremendous  importance  "  of  Ipna  ;  and  now  he  comes 
forward  with  the  announcement  of  a  veritable  treasure-trove,  and 
he  fairly  staggers  under  the  burden  of  the  great  thought  he  has 
to  deliver.  "  I  have  made  a  valuable  find,"  he  says,  "  which  if 
discovered  earlier  would  have  saved  trouble  and  space.  On 
referring  to  tiie  Jesuit  Schouppe  ....  I  find  a  summary 
history  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  followed  by  its  proofs. 
The  first  is  from  Scripture.  In  the  forefront  stands  Gen.  iii. 
15,  with  its  corrupt  Ipsa  in  full,  and  dependent  upoi.  it  are 
three  texts,  Is.  vii.  14,  Gal.  iv.  4,  Lu.  i.  26."  He  recalls  with 
sorrow  the  outlay  of  "trouble  and  space" — the '' six  weeks' " 
incubation,  and  the  "  yards  "  of  "  useful  information  " — 

Tlie  toil 
Of  dropping  buckets  into  empty  wells, 
And  growing  old  in  drawing  nothing  up. 

All  this  might  have  been  "  saved  "  had  he  sooner  made  the 
"  valuable  find."  What  a  pity  his  common  sense  did  not  sug- 
gest to  him,  in  the  beginning,  the  propriety  and  prudence  of 
consulting  Catholic  authorities  for  Catholic  doctrine,  instead  of 
relying  on  Pusey,  Littledale,  and  the  anonymous  scribblings  of 
"Janus"  and  "Quirinus."  He  might  thereby  have  saved 
what  is  more  important  than  "  trouble  and  space,"  namely,  a 
remnant,  even  though  ragged,  of  credit  for  ordinary  intelli- 
gence. In  the  sphere  of  purely  human  science,  conduct  simi- 
lar to  the  Vicar's  in  this  respect  would  be  regarded  only  as 
evidence  of  imbecility,  for  in  that  region  idiots  do  not  give  the 
law  to  experts.  But  the  less  a  man,  especially  a  self-styled 
"Priest,"  knows  about  the  Catholic  religion,  theoretical  or 
practical,  the  bettor  qualified  he  is  to  discuss  it,  and  the  more 
])eremptory  are  his  judgments,  I  have  said  the  Vicar  might 
have  saved  something  by  sooner  consulting  his  Jesuit  author- 
ity. A  delusion  !  Even  his  "  valuable  find,"  now  that  he  has 
it,  exhibits  him  in  the  last  stages  of  mental  decrepitude.  It  is 
indeed  a  cruel  Nemesis.  It  reminds  me  of  a  big  dunce  in  a 
class  at  the  blackboard  doing  a  sum  in  simple  addition,  lie 
adds  up  the  figures  written   ou  the  board,  say,  3+4+2+0 


188  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

— and  writing  down  as  the  result  of  the  operation,  20,  exclaims 
with  a  flourish  of  triumph  in  his  voice :  Twenty  !  while  all 
the  rest  of  the  class  very  plainly  see  that  the  result  is  15,  not 
20.  I  ask  your  readers  to  be  the  class  for  the  nonce,  whilst  the 
Oxford  theological  acrobat  and  contortionist  evolves  his  exege- 
sis of  his  Jesuit  friend.  Here  is  the  Vicar's  translation  in  full 
from  Schouppe : 

"  The  Lord  God  eiid  unto  the  serpent,  '  I  will  put  enmities 
between  thee  and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed  and  her  seed ;  she 
shall  bruise  thy  head,  and  thou  shalt  lie  in  wait  for  her  heel.' 
Now  that  matchless  (praeclara)  woman  is  the  same  of  whom 
Isaiah  prophesies,  '  Behold,  a  Virgin  shall  conceive ';  the  same 
of  whom  St.  Paul  writes  in  Gal.  iv.  4, '  God  sent  forth  His 
Son  made  of  a  woman ';  the  same  of  whom  St.  Luke  records, 
'  The  angel  Gabriel  was  sent  to  a  Virgin.'  Furthermore  the 
enmities  which  God  foretold  He  would  place  between  this 
woman  united  with  her  Son  and  the  serpent,  show  not  only 
that  in  Mary  would  be  nothing  in  common  with  the  devil  and 
his  works,  that  is  sin,  but  everything  which  would  be  most 
opposed  and  contrary  to  them,  that  is  sin ;  whence  it  follows 
that  she  would  be  pure  from  every  stain,  and  moreover  very  full 

of  sanctity  and  grace."    The  athlete  bows  for  applause 

Let  the  performance  proceed.  Now  comes  the  Vicar's  com- 
ment on  his  "find,"  as  follows: 

"  Here,  then,  we  have  an  authorized  exposition  of  the  Script- 
ure proof  in  which  Ipsa  is  clearly  the  fulcrum  of  the  whole 
position.  The  comment  on  inimicitias  would  be  utterly  mean- 
ingless were  the  second  part  of  the  text  omitted  or  the  Ipsa 
changed  to  Ipse.  It  is  because  the  woman  appears  (by  the 
corrupt  reading)  as  the  champion  of  the  human  race  against 
Satan  that  Romanists  argue  her  freedom  from  every  conse- 
quence of  his  polluting  touch.  It  is  true,  Schouppe  adds, 
'  united  with  her  Son,'  but  that  is  only  a  make-weight,  since 
the  position  of  Christ  in  the  corrupted  text  is  altogether  insig- 
nificant. He  does  not  appear  in  it  as  the  source  of  power  for 
th4  conflict^  nor  even  in  personal  form." 

There  is  something  so  inexpressibly  sad  in  this  poor  man's 
stnpidity,  that  I  almost  feel  towards  lum  a  pity  which  masters 


A  Rejoinder.  189 

indignation,  and  puts  severity  to  flight.  But  I  would  be  want- 
ing in  courtesy  did  I  fail  to  show  my  appreciation,  at  all  events, 
of  his  labors  on  behalf  of  the  "  poor  Irish  "  of  "  this  diocese." 
Therefore  I  remark  that  the  Vicar's  above  comment  surely  ex- 
hibits him  in  the  very  apogee  of  imbecility.  As  your  readers 
are  aware  it  has  not  been  my  object  in  this  controversy,  it  is 
not  my  intention  now,  to  discuss  and  prove  the  doctrine  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception.  My  aim  throughout  has  been,  so  fur 
as  it  lay  in  my  power,  to  correct  the  wretched  and  disgraceful 
mistakes  of  Bishop  Kingdon  and  his  Vicar,  and  so  assist  minds 
in  their  communion  that  are  honestly  and  earnestly  seeking  after 
truth  amid  its  Babel  of  doctrines.  Father  Schouppe,  on  the 
contrary,  in  the  extract  from  him  given  by  the  Vicar,  is  dis- 
cnss'mg  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.  As  an 
argument  from  Scripture  he  cites  Gen.  iii.  15 — and  he  quotes 
both  clauses  of  it.  Now,  I  have  repeatedly  explained  the 
Catholic  sense  of  the  second  clause  as  it  stands  in  the  Vulgate 
and  Douay  Bibles,  and  pointed  out  that,  as  regards  the  doctri- 
nal meaning,  it  makes  no  diflference  whether  we  adopt  Ipse^ 
Ipsa,  or  Ipsum.  I  also  proved  from  great  Catholic  theologians 
that  neither  Marian  doctrine  generally,  nor  the  doctrine  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception  owes  anything  whatever  to  the  last 
clause  of  the  Protevangel ;  and  much  less  did  they  owe  to  the 
present  reading  of  the  Vulgate.  Catholic  devotion  here  was  sim- 
ply the  response  which  was  made  by  the  heart  of  the  faithful, 
under  the  inspiration  of  God's  grace,  to  the  Church's  teaching 
concerning  the  excellence  and  prerogatives  of  Mary — "our 
tainted  nature's  solitary  boast,"  as  even  the  Protestant  poet 
could  call  her.  It  is,  in  very  truth,  one  of  the  marvellous 
works  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  Whose  office  it  is  "  to  lead  the  church 
step  by  step  into  all  truth."     St.  John  xvi.  13. 

But  Catholic  theologiiins  do  affirm,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  was  implicitly  re- 
vealed in  that  first  danm  of  the  Protevangel,  ^'herein  God  says, 
— ^ I  will  put  enmities  between  thee  and  the  Woman.''  For,  in 
the  first  place^  it  is  evident,  as  I  have  before  remarked,  that  the 
woman  referred  to  can  be  no  other  than  the  mother  of  Jesus, 
the  second  Eve,  as  the  Fathcrd  from  the  earliest  times  call  her. 


190  IrjiE,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

She  is  plainly  enough  the  Woinan  of  the  ilestoration.  Ami 
our  Jilessed  Lord  would  seein  to  have  had  this  in  Ilia  mind, 
when  He  calls  her  by  that  name,  especially  on  that  solemn  oc- 
casion on  which  lie  appointed  her  from  His  cross  to  be  the 
Mother  of  all  His  elect,  AVhilst  the  redeeming  I'lood  of  the 
dying  Saviour  is  trickling  down  from  the  Tree  of  Life  in  the 
middle  of  the  New  Paradise,  Calvary,  and  the  serpent's  head 
is  being  cruslied  beneath  it,  the  Woman  with  whom  the  serpent 
is  at  emnity,  receives  her  otKce, —  Wovian^  hehold  thy  Son  ! 
So7i,  hehold  thy  Mother,  and  Mary  then  becomes  the  Mother  of 
all  who  had  been  purchased  to  the  New  Life.  Therefore  does 
the  dying  Jesus  call  her  Wonuui,  the  Woman,  the  enemy  of  the 
serpent.  Again :  it  is  equally  evident,  that  the  Divine  Mercy 
is  announcing  in  this  first  clause  an  enmity  between  Mary  and 
the  serpent  whicli  should  not  be  the  result  of  her  perseverance 
under  the  comforting  influence  of  grace,  but  rather  the  product 
of  Ilis  own  absolute  will.  For  He  says :  '  I  will  put '; — the 
work  shall  be  Mine.  I  will  ordain  it  from  the  beginning. 
*'  You," — we  may  suppose  God  to  say,  addressing  the  serpent, — 
"  have  deceived  the  tirst  woman,  and  made  of  her  an  instrument, 
whereby  to  procure  the  ruin  of  man.  That  same  creature, 
which  has  been  the  cause  of  your  triumph,  shall,  to  your  more 
signal  confusion,  become  the  cause  also  of  your  ignominious 
defeat.  And  to  this  end  I  will  see  to  it  that  you  shall  never 
have  either  part  or  lot  in  t/ie  Woman  of  Promise.  My  sancti- 
fying grace  shall  I)uild  a  wall  round  about  her  soul,  which  shall 
separate  her  from  you  forever.  Eve  was  the  beginning  of 
death  ;  Mary  shall  be  the  beginning  of  the  world's  resurrection. 
You  shall  never  boast  that  she  has  for  a  moment  been  polluted 
with  the  mark  of  your  present  victory.  I  will  put  an  ever- 
lasting enmity  between  you :  for  I  purpose  to  bestow  on  her 
an  Immaculate  Conception."  Such  is  the  contention  of  Cath- 
olic Theologians.' 

Now  the  Vicar's  astounding  "  find  "  confirms  all  this.  For, 
what  have  I  just  been  doing?  Simply  expanding  somewhat 
Father  Schouppe's  "  exposition  "  of  the  first  clause  of  our  text — 

'  '3ee  Father  Harper,  1.  c. 


A    RiCJOINDKK.  191 

Ills  coiniiiont  on  enmities  as  a  i)r()of  of  tlie  truth  of  the  Im- 
maculate Conception.  He  quotes  the  verse  from  Genesis  in 
full,  hilt,  hecause  the  second  clause  in  its  Catholic  sense  is  alv 
solutely  irrelevant  to  his  ar<:;mnent,  he  utterly  igtiores  it  and 
does  not  refer  to  it  directly  or  indirectly.  It  is  simply  point- 
less as  regards  the  Immaculate  ('onception,  and  Jesuit  theolo- 
gians are  altogether  too  jeNultlcal  to  use  that  sort  of  jiroof. 
And  yet  the  Vicar  says  :  '■'"Ipsa  is  clearly  the  fulcrum  of  the 
whole  position."  Why  should  I  he  angry  with  him  i  Let  me 
hut  say  to  him,  with  genuine  pity,  as  Saint  Augustine  once  said  : 
"May  God  teach  yon  the  things  which  you  think  you  know." 
"It  is  true,"  he  says,  "that  Schouppe  adds 'united  with  her 
Son,'  hut  that  is  otdy  a  make-weight,  since  the  jwsitiou  of  Christ 
in  the  corrupted  text  is  altogether  insignilicant.  lie  does  not 
appear  in  it  as  the  source  of  power  for  the  conflict,  not  even 
in  2)ersonal  form."  Good  God  !  The  words  of  the  Eternal 
Father  Himself,  at  the  most  momentous  crisis  in  the  history  of 
the  human  race,  characterized  as  a  "make-weight  "  !  And  this 
hy  a  man  who  claims  a  part  in  the  priesthood  of  the  Bride  of 
Christ,  the  Incarnate  God,  whose  coming  is  so  clearly  fore- 
shadowed in  these,  words!  What  hlasphemy  !  AVhy,  Schouppe 
'"'' adds"'  nothing  at  all.  The  union  of  the  woman  with 
her  Son  is  the  verv  work  of  God  in  the  ainiouncement 
of  man's  redemption.  His  first  promise  of  a  Redeemer 
was  ind)edded  (so  to  speak)  in  His  promise  of  a  Co- 
Redemptress.  Look  at  the  text:  'I  will  put  enmities  he- 
tween  thee  and  the  Woman,  and  thy  seed  and  her  seed.'  AVhat 
can  be  clearer  and  more  simple  of  comprehension  ?  Two  ])arties 
are  mentioned  by  God,  between  whom  He  will  ))lace  iri-econ- 
cila})le  "enmities";  these  are  the  respective  parties  of  evil  and 
good ;  they  wlio  fight  under  the  respective  banners  of  Satan 
and  of  God.  The  one  party,  receiving  its  name  in  the  prophecy 
from  Satan,  includes  all  evil  angels  and  evil  men.  The  other 
party,  receiving  its  name  in  the  prophecy  from  Mary — the 
woman,  includes,  firstly,  the  Incarnate  God ;  and  secondly,  all 
good  angels  and  good  men. 

I  am  not  discussing  the  Immaculate  Conception  now,  and 
liave  therefore  drawn  out  but  a  small  part  of  the  full  purport 


192  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

and  extraordinary  significance  of  this  ji/rst  cla'^ise  ;  but  in  view 
of  my  remarks  what  can  your  readers  say  of  the  blasphemous 
length  to  which  the  Vicar  has  carried  his  impertinence  in  his 
"  make-weight "  quotation  ?  But  worse.  He  actually  dares  to 
sit  in  judgment  upon,  and  to  criticise,  the  man7ier  in  which 
Almighty  God,  in  this  clause,  has  chosen  to  indicate  "  the 
position  of  Christ "  in  the  scheme  of  man's  salvation  I  He 
says  that  "position"  is  "insignificant,"  and  complains  that 
Christ  "  does  not  appear  ....  as  the  source  of  power  for  the 
conflict,  nor  even  in  personal  form ! "  I  forbea:  comment ; 
but  did  I  speak  too  strongly  when  I  expressed  my  belief  that 
"  he  would  deny  the  genuineness  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  them- 
selves to  get  himself  out  of  the  miserable  scrape  his  pitiable 
vanity  led  him  into"? 

In  this  connection  and  while  I  am  dealing  with  the  first 
clause  of  our  text  I  must  give  your  readers  another  illustration 
of  the  Vicar's  cowardly  and  malicious  dishonesty — it  cannot  be 
stai-k  ignorance.  In  his  famous  letter  "  for  the  benefit  of  Bil)- 
lical  students"  he  quoted  from  a  pamphlet  of  Canon  Oakeley's 
the  following  words :  "  I  now  come  to  what  we  (Roman  Cath- 
olics) regard  as  the  Scriptural  germ  of  every  doctrine  and  tlie 
legitimate  ground  of  every  authorized  devotion  on  the  subject 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  I  mean  the  prediction  of  the  office  in 
the  Christian  Dispensation  uttered  by  Almighty  God  at  the  time 
of  the  Fall "  (viz.,  Gen.  iii.  15).  These  words  he  tried  to  twist 
into  an  argument  against  me.  In  the  last  installment  of  my 
Resxims  I  very  clearly  pointed  out  that  Oakeley's  statement 
referred  entirely  to  the  first  clause ;  and  I  proved  that  it  was 
Mary's  office  in  the  "  Christian  Dispensation  "  as  Mother  of  our 
Redeemer  and  Saviour,  in  His  Sacred  Humanity,  that  was  pre- 
dicted in  the  utterance  of  Almighty  God.  I  showed  that  neither 
Ipse^  Ipsa,  nor  Ipsum,  as  your  readers  now  well  know,  had 
anything  whatever  to  do  with  this,  and  that  Oakeley  built 
nothing  on  them.  I  also  said :  "  I  challeDge  this  Vicar,  then, 
to  produce  his  proof  to  the  contrary,  if  he  has  it,  and  from  the 
])amphlet,  or  stand  before  this  community  hranded  as  the  prince 
of  garblers  and  tergiversators."  How  does  he  meet  me  ?  He 
simply  repeats,  in  his  third  "  stricture,"  his  cowardly  slander. 


A  Rejoinder.  193 

and  in  a  worse  form.  Here  are  his  words :  "  We  have  already 
seen  it  admitted  by  that  extreme  Ultramontane,  Canon  Oakeley 
....  that  Gen.  iii.  15  (o/*  course  in  itn  corrupt  form) — see 
that,  my  readers — '  is  the  Scriptural  (jeriii  of  every  doctrine  and 
the  legitimate  yround  of  every  anthorized  devotion  on  the 
Blessed  Virgin.'  "  That  is,  he  cannot  accept  my  challenge,  bnt 
elects  the  alternative  of  the  hrand  instead.  That  is  ])roper  and 
becoming.  The  same  line  of  thought  applies  to  my  quotation 
from  Hurter's  Dogmatic  Theology  and  the  Vicar's  "  stricture" 
on  it.     Your  readers  can  examine  them. 

I  need  not  remind  thoughtful  students  that  it  is  only  a  pos- 
teriori— from  the  fact  that  we  live  in  the  full  blaze  of  the  light 
of  the  Incarnation  with  its  concomitant  mercies,  and  revel  in 
the  glorious  liberty  of  the  children  of  God  purchased  for  us 
by  the  passion  and  death  of  the  "  Seed  of  the  Woman,"  Jdary's 
Son — that  we  can  catch  the  full  significance  of  that  iirst  gleam 
of  light  which  relieved  the  darkness  of  Man's  Fall :  "I  will 
put  enmities  between  thee  and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed  and 
lier  seed ;  She  (he  or  it)  shall  crush  thy  head."  How  clear  its 
meaning  to  the  Catholic  mind  1  Permit  me  a  word  more  on 
the  second  cla^ise.  In  its  primary  sense,  it  refers  to  Christ, 
the  Incarnate  God,  whom  we  met  in  the  first  clause,  and  with- 
out whom  we  can  do  nothing.  In  its  secondary  sense,  ancient 
and  modern  witnesses  to  Catholic  doctrine  use  it  to  illustrate 
and  to  accentuate  our  victory  over  Satan  by  and  through 
Christ.  Thus  we  have  seen  St.  Augustine  use  it  in  his  sermon 
on  Saints  Perpetua  and  Felicitas,  and  he  also  applies  it  to  the 
Church.  So  St.  Paul,  as  we  have  seen,  uses  it — Romans  xvi. 
20,  and  the  Bishops  and  Catholic  writers  of  to-day  quoted  from 
Pusey.  I  trust  the  Vicar  has  now  learned  something  about  it 
in  both  senses  which  he  \v\\\  not  soon  forget. 

In  closing  liisconmients  on  the  quotation  from  Schouppe  the 
Vicar  innocently  says :  "  I  may  now,  thereupon,  fairly  hand 
over  my  opponent  to  his  own  Schouppe  backed  by  Pius  IX., 
expressing  the  hope,  however,  that  he  will  not  speak  of  his 
contention  with  them  as  a  theological  chore,  or  they  miglit 
deem  him  rude  and  perhaps  the  church  he  represents  so 
ably  in  this  city  might  in  that  case  have  a  word  to  say  to 


194  Ii'SK,  Ii'SA,  Ipsum. 

liim."  I  am  sure  I  have  cause  to  thank  the  Vicar  very  lieartily 
for  his  solicitude  that  I  should  be  in  good  company.  As  a 
"  priest,"  you  know,  he  is  not  inUiiferent  to  its  influence  on  a 
man's  mind  au  morals.  But,  if  I  may  so  speak,  Pius  IX.,  of 
immortal  memory,  the  PontitI  of  the  Immaculate  Conception, 
and  Father  Schouppe  are  old  friends  of  mine ;  and  I  can  assure 
the  Vicar  that  my  "contention"  in  their  company  has  been  a 
simple  delight.  I  Avould  not  use  the  word  "  c/ior*' "  now — its 
bouquet  is  not  sufficiently  exquisite  to  be  used  in  connection 
with  two  such  names.  I  feel  it  would  be  positively  "rude." 
The  Vicar  is  right — he  is  such  a  veritable  testhete  in  such  mat- 
ters !  But  then  he  speaks  of  the  church  which  he  says  I  "  rep- 
resent 80  ably  in  this  city."  "Ay,  there's  the  rub!"  Who 
could  withstand  that  appeal?  He  knows,  none  better,  how 
near  vanity  is  to  being  "  the  last  infirmity  of  noble  minds." 
Let  me  then  generously  answer  his  appeal  by  commending  him 
in  turn  to  Schouppe's  theology.  In  a  P.S.  to  his  "  Strictures  " 
he  referred  to  an  article  in  the  Quarterhj  lievieio,  written,  I 
do  not  hesitate  to  say,  by  Littledale.  It  is  characteristically 
full  of  false  and  silly  statements,  l^ut  there  is  one  so  ludi- 
crously consonant  with  strict  truth  and  so  in  line  with  my  re- 
marks that  I  give  it  as  follows: 

"  The  English  student  of  theology,  who  happens  to  light  for 
the  first  time  upon  a  Roman  Catholic  theological  text-book,  is 
apt  to  be  struck  by  its  lucid  arrangement,  its  incisive,  unfalter- 
ing statements,  contrasting  not  a  littU  with  some  of  the  books 
his  own  teachers  recommend  to  him." 

Just  so.  The  Vicar  will  find  Schouppe  such  a  book.  He 
will  not  find  it  like  the  one  he  read  to  pass  his  examination  for 
"  Orders" — a  ridiculous  admixture  of  everything  almost  excejA 
theology  and  philosophy.  Let  him  read  Schouppe,  not  for 
controversy  with  Rome,  for  which  he  is  so  utterly  unfitted  and 
unprepared,  not  as  water  is  poured  upon  sand,  but  as  it  is 
poured  upon  the  roots  of  a  tree,  to  be  absorbed  and  incorpo- 
rated into  real  knowledge.  Dr.  Johnson  says  that  "much  may 
be  made  of  a  Scotchman  if  he  be  caught  young,"  perhaps  be- 
cause mv  Celtic  brethren  are  Irishmen  by  descent.  It  has 
fallen  to  the  luck  of  the  Vicar  to  be  "  caught  young,"  and  in 


A    ItKJOINDEK.  195 

tlif  first  flusli  of  Ills  zeal  to  keep  tl»e  oblij^iitions  of  liis  "priestly 
vow."  If  he  but  act  upon  my  friendly  advice  now,  he  will 
find  his  studies  open  a  vista  through  the  entangled  contradic- 
tions of  Anglo-ritualist  theology,  furnish  him  with  some  theo- 
logical perspective,  and  stretch  Ins  mind  to  such  a  degree  that 
the  light  of  common  sense  at  least  will  shine  tliroutjh  and  save 
him  from  repeating  the  exhibition  your  readers  have  witnessed 
in  the  "  Strictures." 

I  thought  I  was  through  with  this  subject,  but  he  asks  your 
readers'  "attention  to  an  interpretation  of  //>««,"  which,  he 
says,  is  ''new"  to  him.  Well,  it  ought  not  to  be  "new"  to 
him,  for  it  is  the  pure  creation  of  his  own  nmddled,  opaque, 
and  bedismalled  brain.  O  it  is  rich  !  Let  us  look  at  it.  He 
quotes  from  a  "  Pictorial  Church  History  "  as  follows :  "  She 
(the  seed  of  the  woman)  shall  crush  thy  (the  serpent's)  head, 
&c."  And  he  remarks  upon  it  thus :  "  Mary  then  is  now  to 
be  considered  by  the  rising  generation  as  the  Promised  Seed. 
Eve  the  woman  and  Mary  the  seed  alone  aj)pear  in  the  text. 
....  It  banishes  all  reference  to  the  Messiah,  and  the  text 
....  ceases  to  be  ...  .  the  first  announcement  of  the  Gos- 
pel." Ha!  ha!!  ha!!!  O  will  not  some  of  his  friends  even 
now  look  after  this  man !  Fennm  hahet  in  cornu.  Verily  we 
have  a  new  interpretation.  It  is  a  pity,  a  thousand  pities,  to 
spoil  it.  But  where  does  Mary  appear  as  the  "Promised 
Seed  "  ?  And  where  does  "  Eve  the  woman  "  appear  at  all  ? 
Of  course — nowhere !  What  is  the  difference  between  "  She 
(the  seed  of  the  woman)  shall  crush  thy  head,"  and  "  she  (he  or 
it)  shall  crush  thy  head  "  ?  Surely  there  is  not  a  particle  of 
difference.  The  words  in  brackets  in  both  citations  are  the 
absolute  equivalents  of  each  other.  IIow  could  such  stuff  get 
into  his  head?  What  is  his  malady?  The  beaut}' and  truth 
of  the  illustration  to  which  he  also  refers — "  Judith  encircled 
by  this  text" — would  only  be  sullied  by  another  word.  I 
desist. 

Just  here  he  slips  in  a  reference  to  the  "  edge-tool  from  De 
Rossi."  He  "  forgot  to  say  "  that  he  "  searched  for  it  in  vain," 
and  he  "  wonders  what  it  was."  Long  before  this  his  wonder 
has  given  place  to  very  different  emotions.    I  hope  he  enjoys 


196  Ii'SK,  Ii'SA,  Ipsum. 

them.  "  I  know  of  a  capital  mare's  nest  in  Pusey's  quotation 
about  /j)fiu}n"  he  says.  What !  Why  did  he  sujjpress  it  tiien, 
in  his  letter  hist  December,  written  "  for  the  benetit  of  Biblical 
students,"  when  he  quoted  from  De  Rossi's  work  on  *'  Tlie 
Various  Keachngs  of  tlie  Old  Testtiment''  i  Worse  than  tliat. 
Why  did  he  say  in  the  lOtii  jiaragraph  of  his  second  "strict- 
ure": "In  all  the  connnentaries  1  have  read  on  Gen.  iii.  15,  I 
have  never  found  Ipsuni  mentioned  as  a  various  reading  and 
that  therefore  I  doubt  if  one  exists  "  ?  He  has  probably  suf- 
fered enough  for  his  sin  in  this  particular.  I  therefore  hand 
him  over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  your  readers,  only  reminding 
them  in  the  words  of  the  Talmud,  that  "  There  is  a  great  dif- 
ference between  one  who  can  feel  ashamed  before  his  own 
soul,  and  one  who  is  only  ashamed  before  his  fellow-men." 

"  I  have  now,"  he  s{»ys,  "  concluded  all  the  necessary  argu- 
ments  I  have  still  a  fesv  words  to  say  outside  the  main 

contention."  To  a  consideration  of  these  "  few  words  "  I  will 
invite  the  attention  of  your  readers  in  my  next. 


LETTER  XV. 

IPSE,   IPSA,   IPSUM — A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe: 

Sir, — I  have  now  disposed  of  Ipse^  Ipsa,  Ipsum  in  their 
strict  relation  to  this  discussion,  and  my  labors  were  at  an  end 
had  my  opponent  adhered  to  the  points  at  issue  when  we  began 
it.  Instead,  however,  he  has  swept  the  gamut  of  misrepre- 
sentation and  calumny  on  a  topic  selected  by  himself,  namely, 
the  position  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  in  Catholic  theology.  The 
one  aspect  in  which,  throughout  his  dreary  "  Strictures,"  he 
represents  his  Saviour's  dearest  Mother,  is  as  the  object  of  an 
anti-Christian  worship,  and  as  the  most  formidable  antagonist 
to  her  Son's  due  honor.  This  is  their  most  repulsive  character- 
istic.    He  is  one  of  the  tribe,  as  flourishing  now  as  in  the  days 


A  Rejoinder.  197 

of  Aristoplianes,  whose  occupation  it  is  "  to  make  the  worse 
appear  the  lietter  reason."  In  the  "Strictures"  lie  appears  at 
his  best — or  worst.  They  are  simply  instinct  with  jjassion, 
prejudice,  and  malevolence.  Ueginning  with  his  very  first  letter 
and  thence  continuously  to  the  end,  he  hurls  at  Catholics  and 
the  Catholic  Church  such  opprobrious  terms  as  "Idolatry," 
"  Apostasy,"  "  Impiety,"  and  "  Intidelity."  Surely  these  are 
the  most  frijrhtful  charges  that  can  be  laid  to  the  score  of  any 
Christian  !  For,  throughout  God's  Word,  the  crime  of  idolatry 
is  fijx)ken  of  as  the  most  heinous,  the  most  odious  and  the  most 
detestable  in  His  eyes,  even  in  an  individual.  What  must  it  be 
then,  when  Hung  as  an  accusation  upon  millions  who  have  been 
baptized  in  the  name  of  Christ,  who  have  tasted  the  sacred  gift  of 
the  Holy  Eucharist,  and  received  the  Holy  Ghost ;  and  of  whom, 
therefore,  if  guilty  of  this  crime,  St.  Paul  tells  us  (Heb.  vi.  6), 
tliat  it  is  im|x>.ssible  that  they  be  renewed  unto  penance? 

But  what  is  idolatry  i  It  is  the  giving  to  man,  or  to  anything 
created,  that  homage,  that  adoration,  and  that  worship,  which 
God  has  reserved  for  Himself ;  and  to  substantiate  such  i  charge 
against  us,  it  must  Ik;  proved  that  such  honor  and  worship  is 
taken  by  us  from  God  and  given  to  a  creature.  My  opponent 
has  in  the  presence  of  the  God  of  truth  (if  he  was  conscious  of 
such),  and  our  fellow-citizens  taken  the  awful  responsibility  of 
imputnig  this  crime  to  us,  and  he  appeals  for  proof  to  the  lan- 
guage we  use  in  expressing  our  love  for,  and  veneration  of,  the 
holiest  creature  that  ever  came  from  the  hands  of  the  Creator, 
creation's  masterpiece,  its  crown  and  glory — Mary  of  Nazareth. 

I  have  before  me  while  I  write  a  copy  of  Raphael's  famous 
painting,  the  "  Madonna  di  San  Sisto."  '  There  stands  "  the 
transfigured  woman,"  as  Mrs.  Jameson  finely  says,  "  at  once 
completely  woman  and  something  more;  an  abstraction  of 
power  and  purity  and  love,  poised  on  the  empurpled  air,  re- 
quiring no  other  support,  and  looking  out  with  lier  melancholy, 
loving  mouth,  her  slightly-dilated,  sibylline  eyes,  quite  through 
the  universe  to  the  end  and  consummation  of  all  things." 

There  Ls  a  listening'  feai*  in  her  regard, 
As  if  calamity  had  but  begun ; 


198  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

As  if  the  vanwaitl  cL^uds  of  evil  days 
Had  spent  their  iiialice,  and  tlie  sullen  rear 
Was  with  its  stored  thunder  laboring  up. 

In  presence  of  this  conception  of  sui-passing  loveliness  and 
majesty,  and  in  the  gaze  of  the  immortal  eyes  of  the  Divine 
Child  enthroned  upon  her  heart,  I  pledge  myself  to  encounter 
squarely  and  fully  the  infamous  calumny  of  the  Vicar,  to 
steadily  confront  his  so-called  proof,  and  so  far  as  reason  can, 
to  tear  ttway  utterly  and  entirely  the  veil  of  prejudice  that  has 
been  hanging,  alas !  too  long,  between  the  eyes  of  Protestants 
and  the  claims  upon  their  veneration  of  the  Mother  of  their 
Redeemer.  I  promise  that  of  his  argument  I  will  "  leave  not 
a  rack  behind  " — and  to  a  large  extent  I  will  use  Pusey  and 
other  Anglican  authorities.  I  ask  the  thoughtful  attention  of 
your  dissenting  Protestant  readers.  I  blnsh  at  the  thought  of 
my  unworthiness  to  be  the  apologist  of  those  claims,  and  I  re- 
gret that  by  the  exigencies  of  the  moment 

The  lyre  so  ]  ong  divine 
Degenerates  into  hands  like  mine. 

Truth,  however,  is  objective  and  altogether  iiidependeut  of 
my  personal  demerits.  Besides,  I  claim  a  share  hi  that  sonship 
declared  at  the  foot  of  the  Cross —  Woman,  he/iold  t/iy  Son  ! 
Son,  behold  thy  Mother — and  I  am  summoned  to  a  discharge 
of  its  duties  by  the  Yicar's  challenge.  If  I  regarded  only  the 
influence  his  words  may  have  on  the  Catholic  mind  nothing 
further  need  be  said  in  reply  to  them.  It  would  be  but  break- 
ing "  a  fly  upon  the  wheel."  Before  that  ineffably  awful  and 
winning  doctrine  of  the  Real  Presence  of  Christ  with  His 
Church,  the  living,  loving  Incarnate  God  tabernacled  with  me!i, 
the  notion  that  any  reverence  to  those  in  whose  bodies  He  had 
dwelt,  any  love  to  her  whose  milk  He  had  deigned  to  drink, 
could  lessen  by  a  hair's  breadth  the  immeasurable  distance  be- 
tween the  Creator  and  the  creature,  is  so  unspeakably  absurd 
that  it  vanishes  out  of  its  presence  as  an  impure  fog  generated 
by  human  malice  and  weakness.  My  opponent's  "  supply  of 
useful  information,"  then,  from  "  Liguori  "  and  "  the  Eaccolta  '* 


A  IIejoindeu.  199 

in  his  first  letter,  and  his  "  wider  view  of  the  Roman  Cnltus  of 
Mary,"  from  Pusey,  in  his  last,  are  for  the  benefit  of  his  fellow- 
Protestants.  Of  course,  he  disowns  and  disclaims  anv  sucli  fel- 
lowship,  for  lie  is  a  "  true  Catliolic,"  but  as  he  can  be  "  all 
things  to  all  men  "  to  score  a  point  against  Home,  I  trust  my 
"dissenting"  Protestant  friends  will  not  feel  aggrieved  v^r 
insulted  at  mv  associating  him  with  them  in  this  connection. 
What  though  as  a  ritualistic  "  Priest ''  he  has  "  popish  ten- 
dencies "  ?     Does  he  not 

Compound  for  sins  he  is  inclined  tq, 
By  damning  those  he  has  no  mind  to, 

when  he  holds  up  for  their  execration  the  soul-destroying  idol- 
atry of  the  "  Roman  Cultus  of  Mary  "  ?  This  he  has  done  for 
Protestants,  Jiud  I  propose  to  answer  him  for  Protestants. 

In  Theology,  as  in  Philosophy,  in  order  to  understand  any 
specific  doctrine,  it  is  necessary,  first  to  have  mastered,  at  least 
in  the  way  of  clear  apprehension,  the  great  main  idea  wliich 
constitutes  its  intellectual  basis.  Now,  without  going  deeply 
into  questions  of  doctrine,  for  which  this  is  not  the  place,  what, 
let  me  ask,  is  the  dogmatic  teaching  of  the  Catholic  Church 
with  regard  to  the  Saints  ?  We  find  it  embqtlied  in  the  solenni 
declarations  of  her  highest  tribunal.  The  Council  of  Trent 
"  Enjoins  upon  all  Bishops  and  others  having  the  charge  of 
teaching  that,  according  to  the  usage  of  the  Catholic  and 
Apostolic  Church,  received  from  the  primitive  times  of  the 
Christian  religion,  and  according  to  the  consent  of  the  holy 
Fathers,  and  the  decrees  of  sacred  Councils "  the  faithful  be 
taught  that  "  The  Saints,  reigning  with  Christ,  offer  up  their 
prayers  to  God.  for  men ;  that  it  is  good  mid  useful  suppliantly 
to  invoke  them,  and  to  have  recourse  to  their  prayers,  help 
and  assistance,  in  order  to  obta'oi  favor  from  God  through  His 
Son^  Jesus  Chnst  oxir  Lord,  loho  is  our  only  Redeemer  and 
SaviourP  The  Catholic  doctrine  regarding  the  Saints  is, 
therefore,  two-fold.  In  the  first  place,  that  the  Saints  of  God 
make  intercession  l)efore  Him  for  their  brethren  on  earth ;  and, 
in  the  second  place,  that  it  is  lawful  to  invoke  their  inter- 
cession. 


200  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

The  setting  up  of  the  Saints  by  the  Church,  as  patterns  for 
religious  and  moral  imitation,  connected  with  the  doctrine  of 
their  intercession  in  our  behalf  with  God,  and  of  the  corre- 
sponding invocation  of  their  aid  on  our  part,  constitutes  the 
'principle  of  the  veneration  of  Saints,  which  is  in  the  same 
way  related  to  the  supreme  worship  of  God,  as  the  mutual 
relation  existing  between  creatures  is  to  the  state  of  dependence 
of  them  all  on  their  common  Creator  and  Lord.  Virtuous 
creatures  look  with  love  and  reverence  on  those  of  their  body 
who  were  eminently  endowed  by  God,  and,  in  virtue  of  the 
love  implanted  within  them,  they  wish  each  other  all  good, 
and  lift  up  tlieir  hands  in  each  other's  behalf  to  God,  who, 
rejoicing  in  the  love  that  emanates  from  Himself  and  binds 
His  creatures  together,  hears  their  mutual  supplications,  in 
case  they  be  worthy  of  His  favor,  and  out  of  tlie  fulness  of 
His  power  satisfies  them — and  this  no  creature  is  abie  to  accom- 
plish. Besides,  if  we  are  to  worship  Christ,  we  are  forced  to 
venerate  His  Saints.  Their  brightness  is  nothing  Init  an  irra- 
diation from  the  glory  of  Christ,  and  a  proof  of  His  infinite 
power,  because  out  of  dust  and  sin  He  is  able  to  raise  up  eternal 
spirits  of  light.  The  Christian,  therefore,  who  reveres  God's 
Saints  glorifies  Clynst  from  whose  power  and  grace  they  have 
sprung  and  whose  true  Divinity  they  attest.  Hence  the  Cath- 
ohc  Church,  while  commemorating,  in  her  Liturgies  and  Offices 
during  the  year,  the  great  events  in  the  life  of  our  Divint 
Lord,  encircles  them  with  the  feasts  of  the  Saints  who,  through- 
out the  history  of  the  Church,  testify  to  the  effects  in  this  world 
of  the  coming  of  our  Redeemer,  of  His  ministry  and  His  suf- 
ferings, His  resurrection  and  the  outpouring  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
So  that  in  the  lives  of  the  Saints,  the  effects  of  the  life  of 
Christ,  and  its  fruits,  are  brought  home  at  once  to  the  contem- 
plation and  feelings  of  every  Catholic.  Here  let  me  remind 
your  readers  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  does  not  declare 
that  the  Saints  tnust^  but  only  that  they  can,,  be  invoked  ;  since 
the  Council  of  Trent,  already  quoted,  says  only  that  "  it  is  (jood 
and  usefvl  suppliantly  to  invoke  their  intercession."  Of  faith 
in  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  and  in  His  mediatorial  office,  or  in 
His  sanctifying  grace,  and  the  like,  the  Church  by  no  means 


A  Kejoindeb.  201 

teaches  that  it  is  merely  "  good  and  useful,"  but  that  it  is  ab- 
solutely necessary  to  salvation. 

So  far  I  think  your  Protestant  readers  will  find  no  evidence 
of  idolatry.  As  I  am  not  discussing  doctrine  here  so  umch  as 
explaining,  T  may  be  permitted  to  contrast  our  position  with 
theirs  in  this  particular.  They  concede  that  the  lives  of  the 
'  Saints  are  worthy  of  imitation,  and  that  they  should  be  honored 
by  our  imitation.  They  even  admit  (in  their  Symbols  now  be- 
fore me)  that  the  Saints  pray  for  the  Church  at  large,  but  they 
assert  that  the  saints  must  not  be  prayed  to  for  their  interces- 
sion. The  reason  they  adduce  is  that  Christ  is  our  only  medi- 
ator! Let  me  examine  shortly  the  colierency  of  these  ideas. 
Is  it  not  passing  strange  that  the  saints  should  pray  to  God  for 
us  without  apprehending  that  they  encroach  on  the  mediatorial 
office  of  Christ  ?  And  that  God,  the  Father,  and  Christ  should 
even  permit  these,  their  functions,  in  our  behalf,  and  accord- 
ingly find  them  free  from  all  presumption — and  yet  that  we, 
on  our  part,  should  not  ask  the  exercise  of  these  kindly  offices, 
because  our  prayer  would  involve  an  offence,  whereas  the  thing 
prayed  for  involves  none?  But  the  prayers  of  the  saints  must 
surely  be  wrong,  if  our  requests  for  such  prayers  be  wrong. 
But  if  their  supplications  in  our  behalf  be  laudable  and  pleas- 
ing to  God,  why  should  not  our  prayers  for  such  supplications 
be  so  too?  Tome  it  is  clear  that  the  consciousness  of  their 
active  intercession,  admitted  by  Protestants,  necessarily  deter- 
mines an  affirmation  of  the  same  on  our  part,  and  excites  a  joy 
which,  when  we  analyze  it,  already  includes  the  interior  wish 
and  prayer  for  their  intercession.  For  all  communion  is  mutual, 
and  to  the  exertions  of  one  side  the  counter-exertions  of  the 
other  must  correspond,  and  vice  versa.  Surely  an  indifference 
to  the  intercession  of  the  Saints  would  annihilate  it  and  com- 
pletely destroy  all  communion  existing  between  the  two  forms 
of  the  one  Church — triumphant  and  militant.  But  if  it  be  im- 
possible for  us  to  be  indifferent  in  this  matter,  then  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Catholic  Church  remains  the  reasonable  and  true 
doctrine. 

Again:  The  intercession  of  the  saints,  as  well  as  the  corre- 
sponding invocation  of  that  intercession  on  our  part,  is  so  far 


202  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

from  impairing  the  merits  of  Christ,  that  it  is  merely  an  effect 
of  the  game — a  fruit  of  His  all-atoning  power  that  again  united 
heaven  and  earth.  This  our  ecclesiastical  prayers  very  beauti- 
fully and  strikingly  express ;  for  they  all  without  exception, 
even  when  we  petition  the  Saincs,  are  addressed  in  our  Re- 
deemer's name.  Moreover,  if  the  intercession  of  the  Saints 
interfere  with  the  mediatorial  office  of  Christ,  then  must  all 
intercession,  and  prayer  for  intercession,  even  among  the  living, 
be  absolutely  rejected,  which  is  absurd.  Christ  alone  redeemed 
us,  and  by  communion  with  Him,  all  gloriiied  through  Him, 
partake  as  well  in  His  righteousness  as  in  all  things  connected 
therewith — hence  the  power  of  their  intercession,  and  hence 
also  the  right  of  asking  for  that  intercession  from  the  living, 
as  well  as  from  the  departed  just.  This  is  the  doctrine  familiar 
to  every  Catholic  child.     (Moehler,  Syvibolism.) 

Let  me  explain  still  a  little  further  the  rationale  of  Catholic 
veneration  of  the  saints.  We  do  not  ask  the  saints  to  pray  for 
us  because  we  cannot  pray  directly  to  God  for  ourselves,  or 
because  we  feel  that  they  love  us  better  than  our  dear  Lord  and 
Redeemer.  It  is  not  because  they  have  a  greater,  a  more 
tender,  sympathy  with  us,  or  are  more  ready  to  help  us,  that 
we  pray  to  the  saints,  and  ask  them  to  intercede  with  our  Di- 
vine Mediator  for  us,  or  to  bear  for  us  our  petitions  to  the 
throne  of  grace,  for  our  Lord  is  perfect  man  as  well  as  perfect 
God,  and  God  himself  is  the  fountain  of  all  love,  mercy,  ten- 
derness, and  compassion  to  which  we  appeal  in  the  saints.  The 
reason  is  the  mediatorial  character  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 
The  principle  of  the  order  founded  by  the  Incarnation  of  tlie 
Word  is  the  deification  of  the  creature,  to  make  the  creature 
one  with  the  Creator,  so  that  the  creature  may  participate  in 
the  divine  life,  which  is  love,  and  in  the  divine  blessedness,  the 
eternal  and  infinite  blessedness  of  the  Holy  and  Ineffable 
Trinity,  the  one  ever-living  God.  I  find  this  idea  in  that 
glorious  saying  put  forth  by  the  greatest  of  the  Eastern,  as  by 
the  greatest  of  the  Western  leathers,  "that  God  became  man  in 
order  that  man  might  become  God — Factus  est  Deus  homo  ut 
hmnofieret  Deus'''':  St.  Athanasius  and  St.  Augustine.  Crea- 
tion itself  has  no  other  purpose  or  end ;   as  the  Incarnation 


A  Rejoindek.  203 

of  the  Word,  and  the  whole  Christian  order,  are  designed  by 
the  divine  economy  simply  as  the  means  to  this  end,  which  is 
indeed  realized  or  consummated  in  Christ  the  Lord,  at  once 
perfect  God  and  perfect  man,  united  indissolubly  in  one  divine 
person.  i 

The  design  of  the  Christian  order  is,  through  regeneration 
by  the  Holy  Ghost,  to  unite  every  individual  man  to  Christ, 
and  to  make  all  believers  one  with  one  another,  and  one  with 
Him  as  He  is  one  with  the  Father.  All  who  are  thus  regener- 
ated and  united  are  united  to  God,  made  one  with  Him,  live 
in  His  life,  and  participate  in  His  infinite,  eternal,  and  ineffable 
bliss.  Creation  is  but  a  manifestation  of  the  goodness  of  the 
Creator ;  and  as  the  ])urpose  of  God  in  creating  was  to  give  to 
creatures  a  share  in  His  own  infinite  life  and  blessedness.  He 
must  be  infinitely  more  loving,  tender,  and  compassionate  than 
any  creature,  however  exalted  or  glorified.  It  is  from  Him 
that  the  glorified  saints  and  angels  draw  whatever  of  love,  ten- 
derness, or  compassion  we  appeal  to  in  them. 

Again :  God  not  only  permits  the  glorified  creature  to  par- 
ticipate in  His  own  life,  love  and  beatitude,  but  He  also  per- 
mits His  creatures  to  be  coworkers  with  Him  in  His  work,  and 
to  participate  in  the  glory  of  its  accomplishment.  He  makes, 
in  some  sense,  the  creature  a  medium  of  effecting  its  ])erfec- 
tion ;  that  is.  He  uses  created  agents  and  ministers  in  effecting 
His  purpose,  and  in  gaining  the  end  for  which  He  creates  them 
and  thus  enables  them  to  gain  the  signal  honor  of  sharing  in 
the  glory  of  the  Creator's  and  the  Redeemer's  work,  that  is,  in 
the  glory  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Hence  it  is  that  the  true 
followers  of  Christ  enter  into  glory  with  Him,  or  participate 
in  the  glory  of  His  Kingdom — this  they  could  not  do  if  they 
had  done  nothing  toward  founding  and  advancing  it.  It  is  not 
that  He  needs  them  for  Himself ;  but  because,  in  His  super- 
abounding  goodness.  He  would  bestow  on  them  the  honor  and 
blessedness  of  sharing  in  His  work,  and  of  being,  so  to  speak, 
employed  in  His  service,  and  meriting  His  approbation  and 
reward.  It  is  His  love  to  His  saints.  His  friends,  that  leads 
Him  to  employ  them  in  His  service,  that  gives  them  the  high 
honor  of  being  intercessors  for  us.     They  are  filled  with  His 


204:  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

love,  and  like  Him,  overflow  with  love  and  goodness  to  all 
His  creatures.  Our  veneration  of,  and  devotion  to,  the  saints 
flows  naturally,  so  to  say,  from  the  principle  of  the  Incarnation 
— the  deification  of  man  or  the  creature  /  and  in  it  we  not  only 
honor  the  saints,  but  manifest  our  faith  in  the  superabounding 
love  and  goodness  of  God,  which  permits  them  to  work  with 
Him  for  tlie  fulfillment  of  His  design  iu  creation,  and  to  share 
in  its  glory. 

The  fact,  that  God  does  employ'  the  saints  and  angels  as 
agents  and  ministers  in  carrying  on  His  mediatorial  work,  is 
indisputable.  If  anything  is  clear  and  certain  from  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  it  is  this.  I  do  not  intend  to  argue  here.  It  is 
implied  in  the  very  fact  of  the  Incarnation,  which  makes  the 
creatiire  one  with  the  Creator.  It  is  only  the  universal  exten- 
sion of  the  sacerdotal  principle  which  underlies  all  religion,  and 
cannot  be  denied  without  denying  the  very  principle  of  the 
Christian  order.  Even  Protestants,  when  they  send  a  note  to 
their  minister  asking  him  to  pray,  and  the  congregation  to  pray, 
for  a  sick  or  dying  friend,  or  for  a  family,  or  an  individual  in 
great  aftliction,  recognize,  whether  tbey  know  it  or  not,  the 
sacerdotal  principle, — the  very  principle  on  which  rests  the 
invocation  of  saints.  We  can,  of  course,  ask  God  directly  for 
whatever  we  think  we  have  need  of ;  but  when  we  ask  also  the 
saints  to  ask  Him  for  us,  we  act  in  accordance  with  His  love 
for  them,  and  unite  with  Him  in  honoring  them,  by  engaging 
them  in  working  out  His  designs.  We  honor  God  in  honoring 
with  our  love  and  confidence  those  whom  He  delights  to  love 
and  honor ;  and  in  invoking  their  prayers,  we  enlist,  in  aid  of 
our  own  prayers,  the  prayers  of  tliose  whose  sanctity  renders 
them  dear  to  our  Lord  and  God.  The  pretence  of  Protestants, 
that,  in  honoring  the  Saints,  we  are  ro])bing  God  of  the  honor 
that  is  His  due,  and  putting  the  creature  in  the  place  of  the  Crea- 
tor, shows,  if  not  absolute  want  of  faith  in  Christ,  an  absolute 
ignorance  of  the  Christian  system  or  the  theological  principles 
revealed  in  the  Holy  Scriptures.  It  overlooks  the  mediatorial 
character  of  the  Gospel,  and  the  fact  that  all  in  the  Gospel 
grows  out  of  the  Incarnation  of  the  Word,  who  was  with  God 
in  the  beginning,  and  is  God.     Their  doubts  or  difficulties  on 


A  Rejok^dek.  205 

this  subject  originate  in  their  rejection  or  ignorance  of  the  In- 
cariiatiou,  and  their  never  having  considered  the  Christian 
system  as  a  whole.  The  heathen  retained  tlie  primitive  revela- 
tion, but  only  in  a  broken  and  piecemeal  state.  Protestants  do 
the  same  with  the  Christian  revelation  as  preserved  and  taught 
by  the  Catholic  Church.  They  have  lost  the  perception  of  the 
relation  of  the  several  parts  to  the  whole,  and  fail  to  recognize 
their  inter-dependence  and  strict  logical  consistency  one  with 
another,  and  with  the  whole,  of  which  they  are  integral  parts. 

Cardinal  Newman  both  sums  up  our  doctrine  on  this  head, 
and  answers  the,  to  me  ever  unintelligible,  objection  of  Protest- 
ants, in  these  words :  "  Only  this  I  know  full  well  now,  and 
did  not  know  then  (that  is,  before  his  reversion  to  the  Church 
of  his  forefathers),  that  the  Catholic  Church  allows  no  image  of 
any  sort,  material  or  immaterial,  no  dogmatic  symbol,  no  rite, 
no  sacrament,  no  saint,  not  even  the  Blessed  Virgin  herself,  to 
come  between  the  soul  and  its  Creator.  It  is  face  to  face, 
^  solus  cum  solo,'  "in  all  matters  between  man  and  his  God.  He 
alone  creates ;  He  alone  has  redeemed ;  before  His  awful  eyes 
we  go  in  death  ;  in  the  vision  of  Him  is  our  eternal  beatitude. 
....  The  command  practically  enforced  (is),  'My  son,  give 
Me  thy  heart.'  The  devotions  then  to  angels  and  saints  as 
little  interfere  with  the  incommunicable  glory  of  the  Eternal, 
as  the  love  which  we  bear  our  friends  and  relations,  our  tender 
human  sympathies,  are  inconsistent  with  that  supreme  homage 
of  the  heart  to  the  Unseen  which  really  does  but  sanctify  and 
exalt  what  is  of  earth." 

So  much  for  the  Catholic  view  of  our  doctrine  on  the  vener- 
ation of  the  Saints.  I  do  not  think  your  candid  readers  will  find 
much  "  idolatry  "  in  it.  But  as  I  like  to  agree  with  my  adver- 
sary in  the  way  when  it  is  possible,  I  will  summon  some  Angli- 
can witnesses  in  support  of  the  orthodoxy  of  this  view. 

Bishop  Latimer  (apiid  Foxe)  writes  as  follows: 

"  Take  Saints  for  inhabitants  of  heaven,  and  worshipping  of 
them  for  praying  to  them,  I  never  denied  but  they  might  be 
worshipped,  and  be  our  mediators,  though  not  by  way  of  re- 
demption (for  so  Christ  alone  is  a  whole  mediator,  both  for 
them  and  for  us),  yet  by  way  of  intercession." 


20G  Ii'.sK,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

I  ouglit  to  apologize  to  Littledale's  disciple  for  calling  this 
witness,  since  Littledale  says  lie  was  one  of  those  "  miscreants  " 
and  " utterly  unredeemed  villains"  who  "did  not  break  and 
eh.atter  (the  Church  of  England)  so  completely  as  to  prevent 
honest  men  from  repairing  it."  Ilow  delighted  Anglicans  in 
"this  diocese"  must  be  to  know  they  have  one  of  thoee 
"  honest  men  "  among  them  !  The  Church  was  "  going  to  the 
dogs  "  before  he  came,  but  now,  of  course,  its  "  dry  bones  will 
live  again."  I  ask  your  readers  to  note  for  the  present  the 
word  '•'"worshipped''''  in  the  above  quotation. 

Bishop  Montague  writes  as  follows : 

"  I  see  no  absurdity  in  nature,  no  iiicongruity  unto  analogy  of 
faith,  no  repugnancy  at  all  to  sacr.  J  Scripture,  much  less  impi- 
ety, for  any  man  to  say,  ''0  sande  amjele  mistos,  wa  pro  me '  (O 
holy  angel  gu.ardian,  pray  for  me)."  In  like  manner  he  defends 
the  Virgin  Justina  mentioned  by  St.  Gregory  Nazianzen,  as  im- 
ploring the  help  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  and  says  that  "against 
such  a  manner  of  itivoking  saints,  joined  with  faith  in  Christ, 
he  would  not  contend." — Forbes,  "  Consid.  Modest.,''^  p.  327. 

Thomdyke  writes  thus :  "  The  second  kind  of  invocations  is 
the  '  oi'a  pro  nobis '  (pray  for  us)  and  the  '  te  rogamus  audi 
nos '  (we  beseech  thee,  hear  us)  directly  addressed  to  the  Blessed 
Virgin  and  the  saints."  Of  this  kind  he  pronounces  that  "«^ 
is  not  idolatry'''' ;  and  that  the  greatest  "lights  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  Church,  Basil,  Nazianzen,  Nyssen,  Ambrose,  Jerome, 
Augustine,  Chrysostom,  both  the  Cyrils,  Theodoret,  Fulgen- 
tius,  Gregory  the  Great,  and  Leo,  ifec,  who  lived  from  the  time 
of  Constantine,  have  all  of  them  sjwken  to  the  saints  departed 
and  desired  their  assistance." 

Again :  Forbes,  Bishop  of  Edinburgh,  has  exhausted  the 
whole  subject  in  his  book  entitled  "  Considerationes  Modestae^'' 
&c.  The  third  chapter  of  his  treatise  is  devoted  to  prove  the 
following  proposition : 

"  The  mere  invocation  or  addressing  of  Angels  and  Saints, 
asking  them  to  join  us  in  praying,  and  to  intercede  for  us  to 
God,  is  neither  to  be  condemned  as  unlawful,  nor  as  useless," 
p.  229.  And  before  bringing  an  overwhelming  mass  of  testi- 
mony from  Protestants  themselves,  he  concludes  thus : 


A  Rejoinder.  207 

"  In  fine,  for  very  many  aj^es  now  past,  tlironghout  the  Uni- 
versal Church,  in  the  East  no  less  than  in  the  West,  and  in  the 
North  also  among  the  Muscovites,  it  is  a  received  usage  to  sing 
'  St.  J\'ter,  etc. ^  pray  for  ns ';  but  to  despise  or  condemn  the  uni- 
versal consent  of  the  whole  church  is  most  dangerous  presumjv 
tion,"  p.  322. 

The  same  Bishop,  among  other  admissions  of  later  times, 
quotes  with  approbation  the  following  from  a  book  entitled 
'"^Plaet  Cathollca  Christiani  Iloininis  Inst'dntio^''  in  English 
and  Latin,  put  forth  by  the  Bishops  of  the  Church  of  England 
in  the  year  1537,  and  afterwards  again  in  the  year  1543  (the 
Latin  in  15*14),  and  never  hitherto  retracted  or  condemned : 

"To  pray  unto  Saints  to  be  intercessors  with  us  and  for  us 
to  our  Lord  in  our  suits  which  we  make  unto  Ilim,  and  for 
Buch  things  as  we  can  obtain  of  none  but  Him,  so  that  we 
esteem  not,  or  worship  not  them  as  givers  of  those  gifts,  but  as 
intercessors  for  the  same,  is  received  and  approved  by  the  most 
ancient  and  perpetual  use  of  the  Catholic  Church ;  but  if  we 
honor  them  any  other  ways  than  as  the  friends  of  God, 
dwelling  with  llim,  and  established  now  in  His  glory  everlast- 
ing, and  as  examples  which  were  requisite  for  us  to  follow  in 
holy  life  and  conversation,  or  if  we  yield  unto  Saints  the 
adoration  and  honor  which  is  due  unto  God  alone,  we  do,  no 
doubt,  break  the  commandment." 

This  is  the  Catholic  doctrine  pure  and  simple — the  doctrine 
of  the  Council  of  Trent,  and  it  will  suflfice  to  say  that  Pnsey 
endorses  every  word  of  it  and  accepts  the  teaching  of  the 
Council.  See  "  Eirenicon^''  vol.  1,  pp.  100,  101 ;  vol.  2,  pp. 
34-5,  41,  &c.  These  witnesses,  one  and  all,  accept  and  pro- 
claim as  true  the  simple  lessons  of  "  the  catechisms  of  Butler 
and  Milner  adopted  by  the  Bishop  of  St.  John  for  this  diocese," 
on  which  the  Vicar  so  magisterially,  and  withal  so  graciously 
puts  his  Imprimatur. 

Now  let  the  unsophisticated  Anglican  "  of  these  parts  "  turn  to 
Article  XXH.  of  the  famous  Thirty-nine  and  read  as  follows: 

"TheRomish  doctrine  concerning  ....  invocation  of  Saints 
is  a  fond  thing  vainly  invented,  and  grounded  upon  no  warranty 
of  Scripture,  but  rather  repugnant  to  the  Word  of  God." 


208  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

His  old-fashioned  associations  and  ideas  must  receive  a  nido 
shock,  and  his  feelings  bo  those  of  a  veritable  Rip  Van  Winkle 
as  he  looks  into  the  faces  of  his  teachers  who  blandly  assure 
him,  in  the  words  quoted  above :  Nous  avona  chaiuje  tout 
cela  !  However,  he  has  some  compensation  in  knowing  that 
he  belongs  to  o.  progressive  church.  The  Lambeth  Conference 
now  assures  him  that  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  Religion  are 
no  longer  in  their  entirety  to  be  binding  as  a  condition  of 
"  complete  intercommunion  "  with  the  Church  of  England.  I 
hope  the  Vicar  will  look  after  his  "  Old  Catholic  "  friends  in 
Wisconsin  now,  and  see  to  it  that  they  get  the  benefit  of  this 
measure  of  grace  from  Lambeth.  Perhaps,  however,  he  still 
adheres  to  the  ritualistic  view  of  the  Episcopate  expressed  by 
Froude.     This  ex- Anglican  deacon  puts  it  thus : 

"  The  latest  and  most  singular  theory  about  them  (the  Angli- 
can Bishops)  is  that  of  the  modern  English  Neo-Catholic  who 
disregards  his  Bishop's  advice  and  despises  his  censures,  but 
looks  on  him  nevertheless  as  some  high-bred  worn-out  animal, 
useless  in  himself,  but  infinitely  valuable  for  some  mysterious 
purpose  of  spiritual  propagation." 

Thus  far  1  have  confined  myself  to  a  simple  statement  of 
the  Catholic  doctrine  on  the  veneration  of  the  saints,  as  I 
learned  it  at  my  mother's  knee,  and  the  principles  which  un- 
derlie it.  In  my  next  I  will  apply  these  principles  to  the 
interpretation  of  those  facts,  touching  the  "  Queen  of  Saints," 
massed  by  the  Vicar  from  "Liguori,"  the  "Raccolta,"  and 
Pusey.  Yoiu*  readers  will  then  be  able,  once  and  forever  I 
hope,  to  give  these  facts  their  due  value. 


LETTER  XVI. 

IPSE,   IPSA,  IP8UM — A  BEjrOINDEB. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — In  my  last  letter  I  did  but  suggest  the  great  positive 
principles  and  moral  ideas  which  are  the  vertebration,  so  to 


A  Eejoindeb.  209 

speak,  of  our  doctrine  on  the  veneration  and  invocation  of  the 
saints.  If  I  have  made  myself  understood,  I  have  shown  why 
it  is  that  we  honor  tliem,  and  why  it  is  that  God  Himself,  in 
fulfilling  Ilis  design  in  creation,  esjjccially  the  "  new  creation  " 
or  the  order  founded  by  the  Incarnation,  uses  the  ministry  of 
saints  and  angels,  and  chiefly,  as  their  Queen,  Ilis  Blessed 
Mother,  'from  whose  chaste  body  He  took  His  human  nature.  I 
so  spread  it  out  to  make  it  intelligible  as  well  to  non-cultured 
religious  Protestant  minds  as  to  the  elite,  spiritually  and  intel- 
lectually, among  them.  Relying  on  the  simple  aspirations  of 
the  human  heart  informed  with  the  Christian  idea,  however 
fragmentary,  I  hoped  to  bring  home  to  many  of  tliem  a  real- 
ization of  spiritual  facts,  which,  however  acknowledged  as 
truths,  hang  in  visionary  distance  like  a  far  cloud  on  the  hori- 
zon of  their  thought.  Of  course  I  am  aware,  from  the  miser- 
able and  wretched  performances  of  the  Vicar  alone,  which  I 
am  now  considering,  how  utterly  incapable  they  are  to  appre- 
ciate the  full  devotion  of  CathoKc  hearts  to  their  Divine  Lord. 
They  cannot  imagine  or  believe  that  there  is  au  exquisite  and 
all-sufficing  happiness  in  the  communion  with  our  Saviour 
which  compensates  all  sacrifices,  lightens  all  burdens  and  tran- 
scends all  the  enjoyment  that  this  world  can  offer — and,  because, 
they  know  nothing  of,  or  believe  nothing  in,  that  stupendous 
miracle  of  His  love,  His  real  presence  in  the  holy  and  adorable 
Sacrament  of  the  Altar.  Bound,  from  their  infancy,  with  the 
triple  cord  of  calumny,  wherein  Protestantism  has  involved 
the  Catholic  Church,  the  gigantic  framework  of  prejudice 
erected  thereon,  and  which  rises  up  and  permeates  the  mind 
and  heart  of  Protestants,  ignorant  and  intelligent  alike,  and  the 
whole  developing  into  the  power  of  liahit,  the  mightiest 
over  fallen  man,  the  very  truth  which  is  most  dear  to  them  in 
the  shape  in  which  they  have  received  it,  ceases  to  be  amiable 
in  the  Catholic  Church,  where  it  is  most  pure  and  perfect. 
Their  writers  and  preachers  and  "  Priests  "  (is  it  impious  so  to 
speak  ?)  of  "  Mission  Chapels "  seem  hardly  to  suspect  that  in 
outcast "  Romanism  "  the  love  of  Christ  is  incomparably  stronger, 
the  familiar  consideration  of  His  divine  Sacrifice  more  frequent, 
the  sense  of  His  satisfaction  for  our  sins  more  vivid,  the  appro- 


210  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsfm. 

priation  of  His  transcendent  merits  more  intimate  and  babitual, 
the  reliance  on  Him  only  as  the  hei«;fht  and  depth  of  onr  secu- 
rity more  exclusive  and  more  entire  than  among  their  multi- 
1  lied  and  contlicting  sects.  The  truth  of  these  remarks  is  aj)- 
parent  every  day  and  not  always  eitlier  in  minds  of  dimensions 
m  near  a  geometrical  line  that  they  cannot  hold  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments. 

Now,  iis  I  have  once  remarked,  we  liave  no  special  doctrine 
respecting  tlic  veneration  due  to  Mary  of  Nazareth.  She  is  to 
he  honored  becatisc  all  saints  are  to  be  honored,  and  for  no  other 
reason.  She  is  to  be  lionored  moi'e  than  other  saints,  because 
certain  facts  are  revealed  to  us  regarding  her,  both  in 
Holy  Scripture  and  by  Tradition,  from  which  we  know 
that  God  would  have  us  especially  to  honor  her  whom  He  has 
chosen  to  honor  above  all  other  Saints.  In  them  there  is  a 
colored,  refracted  ray  from  His  sanctity  and  holiness ;  in  her 
there  is  a  full-orbed  glory,  a  paler  reflex  from  Him  who  is  the 
reflex  of  His  Father.  She  is  the  very  Queen  of  angels  and  saints, 
and,  as  the  Mother  of  God,  is  exalted  above  every  other  crea- 
ture, and  is  only  below  the  IneflFable  Trinity.  Whom,  then, 
should  God  more  delight  to  honor,  or  more  delight  to  have 
honored  by  us  i  She  is  the  spouse  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  she  is 
the  Mother  of  Christ,  and  nothing  seems  more  in  accordance 
with  His  love  and  goodness,  and  the  very  design  of  His  medi- 
atorial kingdom,  as  revealed  in  the  Gospel,  than  that  He  should 
do  her  the  honor  of  making  her  His  chief  agent  in  His  work 
of  love  and  mercy, — the  medium  through  which  He  dispenses 
His  favors  to  men.  There  is  joy  in  heaven  among  the  angels 
of  God,  we  are  told,  over  one  sinner  that  repents.  The  Saints 
and  Angels,  filled  with  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  in  perfect  con- 
cord with  the  divine  purpose  in  creation,  and  with  the  Word  in 
becoming  Incarnate,  are  full  of  love  to  all  the  creatures  of 
God,  and  join  with  Him  into  whose  glory  they  have  entered, 
in  seeking  the  blessedness  of  those  He  has  redeemed  by  His 
own  Precious  Blood.  They  take  an  interest  in  the  salvation  of 
souls,  tlie  repentance  of  sinners,  and  the  growth  and  perfection 
of  the  regenerated,  and  consequently  love  their  mission,  and 
perform  their  task  with  their  own  good-will,  and  with  joy  and 


A  Rkjoinder.  211 

alacrity.  Tbislove,  this  interest,  this  good-will,  must  be  gryat- 
est  in  their  Queen,  the  ever-blessed  Mary.  As  she  is  exalted 
alx)ve  every  other  creature,  only  God  llluiself  can  surpass  her 
in  His  love  for  His  creatures. 

Why  do  Catholics  claim  so  exalted  a  position  for  Mary? 
What  is  its  foundation,  the  principles  or  reasons  on  which  it 
rests?  Let  me  consider  them.  This  claim,  I  say,  is  author- 
ized by  her  peculiar  relation  to  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation, 
therefore  to  our  salvation,  and  the  peculiar,  special  honor  we 
render  her  is  in  honor  of  that  mystery  itself,  that  is  in  honor 
of  God  in  His  human  as  well  as  in  His  divine  nature.  Those 
who  reject  the  Incarnation,  such  as  pi'ofessed  Pelagians,  Nesto- 
rians,  Socinians,  or  Unitarians,  can  understand  nothing  of  this 
honor,  and  have  no  lot  or  pa  :t  in  it ;  for  they  can  neither  wor- 
ship God  in  Ilis  human  nature,  nor  admit  that  He  really  as- 
sumed flesh  from  the  flesh  of  Mary.  To  them  Mary  is  only 
an  ordinary  woman,  and  holds  no  peculiar  r.?lation  to  the  mys- 
tery of  redemption.  She  has,  in  their  view,  nothing  to  do 
with  our  salvation,  and  is  related  to  Christianity  no  otherwise 
than  is  any  other  woman.  They  assign  lier  no  peculiar  position 
or  oflSce  in  the  economy  of  God's  gracious  providence.  They 
are  offended  when  they  hear  us  call  her  the  Mother  of  God, 
and  wisely  sneer  at  us  when  they  hear  us  address  her  as  our 
own  dear  mother.  I  have  nothing  here  to  say  to  them  and  to 
such  as  they.  The  veneration  of  Mary  presupposes  the  real 
Incarnation  of  our  Lord  in  her  chaste  body,  and  her  real  and 
subsisting  maternal  relations  to  God  made  man,  and  they  who 
shrink  from  it  show  by  that  fact  that  they  do  not  really  believe 
in  that  mystery,  and  therefore  do  not  really  embrace  the  Christian 
religion,  and  at  best  make  only  a  hollow  profession  of  it-  Con- 
cede the  Incarnation,  and  the  Catholic  veneration  follows  as  a 
necessary  consequence,  because  then  Mary  becomes  truly  the 
Mother  of  God.  If  you  coTJcede  the  Incarnation,  you  must 
concede  that  Mary  is  the  Mother  of  God  ;  if  you  deny  that  she 
is  the  Mother  of  God,  you  must  de^^  ^^  the  Incarnation.  There 
is  no  middle  course  possible.  If  Mary  is  the  Mother  of  her 
*^>on,  then  the  relations  between  mother  and  Son  and  all  that 
those  relations  imply  subsist  and  must  ever  subsist  between 


212  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

them,  and  she  must  be  honored  as  the  Mother  of  God,  and 
therefore  of  grace,  the  grace  through  which  we  are  redeemed 
and  saved. 

Proof — In  the  Incarnation  God  assumes  human  nature,  be- 
comes man  without  ceasing  to  be  God,  and  so  assumes  human 
nature  that  He  becomes  from  the  moment  of  the  Incarnation 
as  truly  human  as  He  is  divine, — perfect  man  as  well  as  perfect 
God.  It  is  not  that  a  perfect  man  is  united  to  perfect  God, 
but  that  perfect  God  becomes  Himself  really  perfect  man,  in 
such  sort  that  the  human  nature  is  as  truly  the  nature  of  the 
Divine  Person  or  word,  as  is  the  Divine  nature  itself.  The 
two  natures  are  united  in  one  person,  or  the  one  person  is  the 
hypostasis  or  the  one  suppof'tum  (as  logicians  say)  of  two  dis- 
tinct natures,  one  Divine,  the  other  human.  The  tendency  of 
Protestants,  even  of  those  who  profess  to  hold  the  mystery  of 
the  Incarnation,  is  to  regard  the  union,  not  as  the  union  of  two 
natures  in  one  person,  but  as  a  simple  moral  union  of  two  per- 
sons, one  human,  the  other  God,  or  the  luiion  of  human  nature 
in  its  own  human  personality  with  God,  which  is  what  the  in- 
famous Nestorius  taught.  Hence,  Protestants  have  a  tendency 
to  '■dissolve''  Christ,  and  to  cherish  the  spirit  of  whf»t  the 
Apostle  calls  Antichrist.  But  the  true  doctrine  of  the  Incar- 
nation, which  we  must  admit,  if  we  admit  any  real  Incarna- 
tion at  all,  is,  that  the  human  and  Divine  natures  are  united, 
without  being  confounded,  in  one  Divine  Person.  Person  is 
distinguishable,  but  not  separable,  from  nature,  for  no  person 
is  conceivable  as  really  existing  without  a  nature ;  and  though 
human  as  well  as  Divine  nature  is  distinguishable  from 
person,  yet  neither  is  conceivable  as  really  existing  with- 
out person  or  personality.  The  human  nature  of  Christ  is 
not  human  nature  divested  of  personality ;  it  is  a  person  as 
much  as  is  the  human  nature  of  James  or  John,  but  its  person  is 
Divine,  not  human, — the  eternal  person  of  the  Divine  nature 
of  Christ.  Hence,  Christ  is  tivo  distinct  natures  in  one  person, 
which  Divine  Person  is  God,  or  the  second  person  of  the  ever- 
adorable  Trinity. 

Now  God  in  His  human  nature  is  literally  and  timly  the 
Son  of  Mfvry,  and  she  is  as  much  His  mother  as  any  woman  is 


A  Rejoinder.  213 

the  mother  of  her  own  son.  She  is  not  the  mother  of  a  son 
nnited  to  God,  of  a  human  son  received  into  union  with  God, 
for  tliat  were  the  error  of  the  Adoptionists  and  would  imply 
that  the  human  nature  of  Christ  has  a  human  personality, 
which  it  has  not  and  never  had.  Human  nature  cannot  exist 
without  a  personality,  and  the  human  nature  of  Christ,  there- 
fore, was  not  and  could  not  have  been  generated,  without  His 
Divine  personality.  Then  that  which  was  conceived  in  the 
womb  of  Mary  and  born  of  her  was  the  Divine  Person  assum- 
ing to  Himself  flesh,  or  the  nature  of  man,  therefore  God. 
Hence  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word,  Mary  is  the  Mother 
of  God,  and  therefore  God  is  as  truly  her  son  as  any  one  is  the 
son  of  his  own  mother.  Undoubtedly,  Mary  was  not  the 
mother  of  God  in  His  Divine  nature,  that  is,  the  mother  of  the 
Divinity,  for  in  that  sense  God  is  eternal,  necessary,  and  self- 
existent  Being,  and  the  Creator  of  Mary,  not  her  Son ;  but 
God  Incarnate  is  still  God,  and  God  having  assumed  flesh  is  no 
less  God  in  His  human  nature  than  in  His  Divine  nature. 
Aiid  therefore  Mary  is  none  the  less  the  Mother  of  God  be- 
cause His  mother  only  in  His  human  nature,  for  the  human 
nature  of  which  she  is  the  mother  is  the  human  nature  of  God. 
She  is  not  the  mother  of  the  Divinity,  but  she  is  the  mother  of 
God,  for  since  the  Incarnation,  God  the  Son  is  the  Lfiejjerson 
of  both  Divine  nature  and  human  nature,  and  is  as  to  nature 
at  once  God  and  man.  How  God  can  descend  to  be  the  person 
of  human  nature,  or  exalt  human  nature  to  be  truly  His  own 
,  nature,  is  a  mystery  which  transcends  every  created  intelli- 
gence and  which  none  but  He  Himself  can  fully  comprehend. 
All  we  know  or  can  pretend  to  know,  is  the  fact  that  He  has 
done  so,  and  thus,  although  our  Creator  has  become  our  Brother, 
flesh  of  our  flesh,  that  we  might  be  made  partakers  of  His 
Divine  nature,  and  live  forever  in  a  true  society  with  Him. 
Such  is  our  doctrine  on  the  Incarnation  as  I  have  learned  it 
and  taught  it  to  Catholic  boys  in  day  and  Sunday  school. 

"Now  Mary,  as  the  mother  of  God,  is  something  more  than 
an  ordinary  woman,  and  holds  a  place  in  the  economy  of  grace 
different  from  that  of  any  otlier  woman,  different  from  and 
above  that  of  any  other  creature.    She  has  been  honored  by 


214  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

the  Creator  as  no  other  creature  has  been,  for  she  alone  has 
been  selected  by  Him  to  be  His  mother.  If  God  has  distin- 
guished her  from  all  other  women,  if  He  has  chosen  her  to  be 
His  mother,  shall  not  we  distinguish  her  from  all  other  women 
and  honor  her  as  His  mother?  What  higher  honor  could  God 
confer  on  a  creature  than  He  has  conferred  on  Mary?  Shall 
we  not  honor  whom  God  Himself  delights  to  honor,  and  like 
Him  give  her  the  highest  honor  that  we  can  give  to  a  creature  ? 
We  are  to  love  and  honor  the  Son  as  we  love  and  honor  the 
Father,  and  we  are  to  love  and  honor  Him  in  His  sacred  Hu- 
manity no  less  than  in  His  Divinity.  We  cannot  dissolve 
Christ;  for  "Every  spirit  that  dissolveth  Jesus,"  says  the 
blessed  Apostle  John,  "is  not  of  God;  and  this  is  that  Anti- 
christ of  whom  ye  have  heard  that  he  cometh,  and  he  is  now 
already  in  the  world"  (I  John  iv.  3).  We  cannot  dissolve 
Christ  and  worship  Him  in  His  Divine  nature  only,  and  refuse 
to  worship  Him  in  His  human  nature.  He  is  one  Christ,  not 
two, — one  human,  the  other  Divine.  He  is  two  forever  distinct 
natures  in  one  person,  to  be  loved  and  honored  alike  in  both 
natures,  and  therefore  in  her  from  whom  He  took  His  human 
nature.  We  cannot  honor  Him  without  honoring  her,  if  we 
try,  nor  honor  her  as  His  mother  without  honoring  Him.  Such 
is  the  intimate  relation  between  the  Mother  and  the  Son,  that 
whatever  honor  we  render  her  as  His  mother  redounds  to  Him, 
and  whatever  honor  we  render  to  Him  as  her  son — that  is,  to 
Him  as  come  in  the  flesh — will  overflow  and  extend  to  her. 
The  two  cannot  be  separated,  for  the  flesh  of  the  Son  is  ^»f  the 
flesh  of  the  Mother,  and  both  have  one  and  the  same  natui-e, 
and  impossible  is  it  to  honor  the  nature  in  the  one  without 
honoring  it  in  the  other,  ^y  this  fact  Mary  becomes  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  mystery  of  our  Redemjition  and  final 
salvation.  We  are  redeemed  only  by  God,  not  in  His  Divine 
nature,  but  in  that  very  nature  which  He  took  from  Mary, — 
God  in  human  nature;  for  as  the  Divine  nature  can  neither 
suffer,  nor  obey,  nor  merit,  it  was  only  in  human  nature,  in  the 
flesh,  become  really  His  nature,  that  God  could  perform  the 
work  of  Redemption,  that  He  couM  satisfy  for  sin,  and  merit 
for  us  the  grace  of  pardon  and  satisfaction.    Mary  is  thus 


A  He  JOIN  DEB.  215 

called,  and  rightly  called,  "  the  Mother  of  Grace,"  for  she  is 
that,  inasmuch  as  she  is  the  Mother  of  the  Sacred  Blesh  through 
which  grace  has  been  purchased  and  is  communicated  to  us. 

Again :  Let  your  readers  turn  to  St.  Luke,  i.  26-38.  They 
will  lind  that  the  Incarnation  did  not  take  place  without  Mary's 
free  and  voluntary  consent.  It  was  asked  and  given,  though 
not  given  till  an  explanation  had  been  demanded  from  God's 
messenger  to  Mary  and  received.  Not  until  she  is  assured  by 
Gabriel  that  *no  word  is  impossible  with  God'  does  she  give 
her  consent :  "  Beliold  the  handmaid  of  the  Lord  :  le  it  done 
to  me  according  to  thy  Word."  There  was  then  a  moment 
when  the  salvation  of  the  world  depended  on  the  consent  of 
Mary.  Man  could  not  be  redeemed,  satisfaction  could  not  be 
made  for  sin,  and  grace  obtained,  without  the  Incarnation,  and 
the  Incarnation  could  not  take  place  without  the  free,  voluntary 
consent  of  this  humble  Jewish  maiden.  While,  then,  we  are 
lost  in  admiration  of  the  infinite  condescension  of  God,  that 
would  do  such  honor  to  human  nature,  as  in  some  sort  to  place 
IIin)self  in  dependence  on  the  will  of  one  of  our  race,  to  carry 
into  effect  His  own  purpose  of  infinite  love  and  mercy,  we  can- 
not help  feeling  deep  gratitude  to  Mary  for  the  consent  she 
gave.  We  call  her  blessed  for  the  great  things  He  that  is 
mighty  has  done  to  her,  and  we  bless  her  also  for  her  own 
consent  to  the  work  of  redemption.  She  gave  to  that  work  all 
she  had ;  she  gave  her  will ;  she  gave  her  flesh  ;  she  gave  her 
own  and  only  Son  to  one  long  passion  of  thirty-three  years, 
to  the  agony  in  the  garden,  and  to  the  death  on  the  Cross. 
It  is  true,  God  had  selected  her  from  all  eternity  to  be  His 
Mother,  and  had  filled  her  with  grace ;  but  neither  the  election 
nor  the  grace  took  away  her  free  will,  or  diminished  the  merit 
of  her  voluntaiy  consent.  She  could  have  refused ;  and  de- 
serves she  no  love  and  gratitude  from  us,  who  have  hope  only 
through  her  flesh  assumed  by  the  Son  of  God,  that  she  did  not 
refuse?  Can  we  say,  in  vie  v  of  this  fact,  that  she  has  no 
peculiar  relation  to  our  Redemption,  no  share  in  the  work  of 
our  Salvation  ?  To  say  so  would  be  simply  to  deny  that  we 
are  redeemed  and  saved  by  God  in  the  flesh,  that  the  human 
nature  of  our  Lord  performs  any  office  in  the  work  of  redeiup- 


216  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

tion  and  salvation.  Therefore  to  refuse  to  honor  Mary  as  con- 
nected with  and  sharing  in  that  work  is  to  deny  that  it  is  in 
His  human  nature  that  God  redeems  and  saves  us,  which  is 
either  to  deny  redemption  and  salvation  altogether,  or  to  con- 
tend that  God  redeems  and  saves  us  in  His  Divinity,  that  is,  to 
contend  that  the  Divine  nature  suifered  and  died,  which  is 
absurd. 

"  If  we  have  faith,"  says  Cardinal  Newman,  "  to  admit  the 
Incarnation  itself,  we  must  admit  it  in  its  fullness;  why  then 
should  we  start  at  the  gracious  appointments  which  arise  out 
of  it,  are  necessary  to  it,  or  are  included  in  it  ? "  It  established 
between  Mary  and  Jesus  the  real  relation  of  mother  and  son. 
This  relation  is  a  subsisting  relation,  and  subsists  as  really  in 
Heaven  as  it  did  when  both  were  on  earth ;  and  therefore 
Mary  still  preserves  all  her  maternal  rights  in  regard  to  her 
Son,  and  He  still  owes  her  all  filial  love,  reverence,  and.  obedi- 
ence. For  if  He  is  God,  He  is  also  man,  and  in  His  humanity 
lias  all  that  pertains  to  pure  and  sinless  humanity.  The  Son  of 
God  in  His  humanity,  not  of  course  in  His  Divine  nature,  nor 
in  any  matter  which  is  proper  to  Him,  only  in  that  nature, 
was  subject  to  Mary  here,  and  obeyed  her — St.  Luke  ii.  51 ; 
and  as  the  two  natures  remain  in  Him  forever  distinct,  two 
natures  in  one  person,  I  know  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the 
relation,  and  what  pertains  essentially  to  it,  between  the  mother 
and  the  son  in  His  hunir.n  nature,  are  not  precisely,  save  that 
both  are  now  in  a  glorified  state,  what  they  were  when  on  the 
earth.  We  are  not  to  suppose  the  soul  loses  in  the  future  life 
the  habits  of  this — (see  Joseph  Cook's  "  Final  Permanence  of 
Moral  Character  ") — and  therefore  we  must  suppose  that  the 
habit  of  obedience,  love,  and  reverence  of  our  Divine  Lord  to 
His  holy  mother  here,  are  still  retained.  Tlierefore,  we  con- 
clude surely  that  her  will,  always  one  with  God's  will,  because 
moved  by  the  Divine  charity,  is  still  regarded  by  Him  as  the 
will  of  His  mother,  and  has  that  weight  with  Him  that  the 
right  will  of  a  mother  must  always  have  with  a  good,  loving 
Bon. 

Once  more.    Mary  is  also  our  mother,  the  mother  of  all  true 
Christians.     They  who  never  reflect  on  the  Mystery  of  the 


A  Rejoinder.  217 

Incarnation,  and  who  have  no  faith  in  redemption  through  the 
Cross,  laugh  at  us  when  we  call  Mary  our  mother.  Yet  she  is  our 
mother,  and,  to  i-ay  the  least,  as  truly  our  mother  as  was  Eve 
herself.  Eutychianism  is  a  heresy.  The  human  nature  hypo- 
statically  united  to  the  Divine,  remains  forever  distinct  from 
the  Divine  nature,  and,  therefore,  our  Lord  remains  forever 
God  and  man  in  one  Divine  person.  By  assuming  our  nature 
the  Son  of  God  has  made  Himself  our  Brother.  We  become, 
through  the  nature  so  assumed,  of  the  same  nature  with  God. 
Hence,  He  is  not  ashamed  to  call  us  hrethren.  Now  of  this 
human  nature  in  Christ,  by  which  we  become  united  to  God 
by  nature,  Mary  is  the  mothe7\  and  as  there  is  but  one  human 
nature  as  well  as  but  one  Divine  nature,  she  is  truly  our 
mother,  in  so  far  as  we  through  that  human  nature  be- 
come united  to  Him.  She  is  not  our  natural  mother  in  the 
sense  of  mother  of  our  personality,  but  of  our  nature  in  God, 
and  in  so  far  as  we  were  raised  to  hrotherhood  with  Christ  her 
Son,  and  are  made  through  Him  07ie  with  God. 

She  is  our  spiritual  mother,  for  it  is  only  through  her  flesh, 
assumed  by  the  Son  of  God,  that  we  were  redeemed  and  be- 
gotten to  the  new  spiritual  life.  I  cannot  too  often  repeat, 
that  it  is  the  Word  made  flesh,  or  God  in  the  flesh,  that  re- 
deems and  saves  or  beatifies  us.  It  is  always  through  the  In- 
carnate Son  that  we  have  access  to  the  Father,  or  that  even  the 
saints  in  heaven  become  one  with  God,  and  behold  Him  in  the 
Beatific  Vision  as  He  is.  The  life  we,  as  Christians,  live  here 
is  the  life  that  proceeds  from  God  in  Ilis  Humanity,  and  the 
life  we  hope  to  live  hereafter  proceeds  from  Him  in  the  same 
sense.  To  suppose  the  saint  here  or  hereafter  separated  from 
the  flesh,  which  God  assumed  from  Mary,  would  be  to  suppose 
his  annihilation  as  a  saint,  as  much  as  to  suppose  our  separa- 
tion from  God  as  Creator  would  be  to  suppose  the  annihila- 
tion of  our  natural  existence.  Here  is  the  mystery  of  godliness 
which  was  manifest  in  the  flesh.  Then,  unless  we  can  make  it 
true  that  Mary  is  not  the  Mother  of  our  Lord  in  His  human 
nature,  we  cannot  make  it  untrue  that  she  is  our  spiritual 
mother.  So  long  as  spiritual  life  is  dependent  on  God  in  His 
human  nature,  so  long  is  Mary  truly  the  mother  of  spiritual  life, 


218  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

and  so  long  as  she  is  the  mother  of  that  Hfe,  so  long  is  she  our 
spiritual  mother,  and  to  be  honored  as  such,  and  honored  even 
more  than  our  natural  mother,  for  the  spiritual  life  is  infinitely 
more  than  the  natural  life. 

Lastly.  We  call  Mary  the  Queen  of  Heaven — of  heaven 
and  earth — Universal  Queen,  This  is  our  explanation :  Our 
Divine  Lord  is  King,  for  to  llira  has  all  dominion  been  given. 
He  is  King,  not  merely  as  Son  of  God,  in  His  Divine  nature, 
but  He  is  King  in  His  human  nature,  as  Son  of  Mary.  Her 
Son  is  King;  then,  as  mother  of  the  King,  we  love  to  call  her 
Queen,  the  Queen  His  mother.  As  He  loves  and  honors  His 
mother,  and  must  as  a  good  son  wish  all  creatures  also  to  love 
and  honor  her,  He  must  have  crowned  her  Queen,  and  given 
her  a  formal  title  to  the  love,  honor,  and  obedience  due  to  a 
Queen.  How  suggestive  of  thought  in  this  connection  is  that 
beautiful  picture  of  King  Solomon  and  his  mother :  "  Then 
Bethsabee  came  to  King  Solomon,  to  speak  to  him  for  Ado- 
nias :  and  the  King  arose  to  meet  her,  and  bowed  to  her,  and 
sat  down  upon  his  throne :  and  a  throne  was  set  for  the  king's 
mother,  and  she  sat  on  his  right  hand  "  (3  Kings  ii.  19). 


LETTER  XYIL 

ipse,   ipsa,   ipsum — A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir,— In  my  letter  of  Tuesday  I  submitted  considerations 
which  will  fully  justify  our  warm  devotion  to  Mary,  and  the 
strongest  expressions  which  the  fervor  of  Catholic  piety  can 
use.  They  explain,  too,  why  Mary  holds  so  distinguished  a 
place  in  Christian  worship,  and  performs  so  important  a  mis- 
sion in  furtherance  of  the  mediatorial  work  of  Her  Divine 
Son.  Her  love  is  greater,  for  she  is  "  full  of  grace,"  as  the 
Archangel  declared,  greater  than  that  of  any  other  creature. 
She  is  more  intimately  connected  with  the  Holy  Trinity,  and 
holds  a  relation  to  God  which  is  held  and  can  be  held  by  no 


A  Rejoinder.  219 

other  creature.  In  some  sense,  as  the  Mother  of  the  Incarnate 
Word,  she  is  the  medium  througli  wliich  is  efifected  the  deifi- 
cation of  man, — the  end  of  the  supernatural  order,  She  can- 
not be  separated  from  that  end.  We  can  easily  understand, 
then,  why  God  should  assign  her  a  part  assigned  to  no  other 
creature.  Her  love  is  only  less  than  His,  and  her  heart  is 
always  in  perfect  unison  with  the  Sacred  Heart  of  her  Son, 
and  mother  and  sori  are  strictly  united  and  inseparable. 
Equally  easy  is  it  now  to  understand  why  the  Christian  heart 
overflows  with  love  and  gratitude  to  Mary ;  why  Christians  recur 
to  her  with  so  much  couiidence  in  the  efficacy  of  her  prayers, 
the  success  of  her  intercession ;  and  why  Catholics  offer  her 
the  highest  honor  below  the  supreme  worship  offered  in  the 
Holy  Sacrifice,  but  never  offered  except  to  God  alone. 

Protestants  call  the  veneration  we  pay  to  Our  Lady,  in  which 
"it  is  their  sad  and  sorrowful  lot"  to  have  no  share,  Mariola- 
try,  and  in  order  to  justify  their  alienation  from  the  family  of 
Christ,  seek,  under  pretext  of  zeal  for  the  honor  of  God,  to 
brand  it  as  "  idolatrous."  I  am  not  at  all  surprised  by  this. 
They  have  lost  the  deep  sense  of  the  Christian  religion,  and 
really  retain  no  worship  to  God  superior  to  that  which  we  pay 
to  Him  in  His  saints.  In  regard  to  external  worship,  it  is  not 
we  who  worship  Mary  as  God,  but  they  who  do  not  worship 
God  Himself  as  God.  The  peculiar  distinctive  external  wor- 
ship of  God  is  the  offering  of  sacrifice ;  but  Protestants  have 
no  sacrifice,  as  they  have  no  priesthood,  and  no  altar — even 
their  churches  are  only  meeting  houses,  or  places  of  assembling 
together.  In  rejecting  the  holy  sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  they 
have  retained  nothing  more  than  we  offer  to  Mary  and  the 
saints.  Consequently  they  are  unable  to  perceive  any  distinc- 
tion between  what  they  regard  as  the  external  worship  of  God, 
and  that  which  we  render  to  Him  in  His  saints — that  is,  a  wor- 
ship of  prayer  and  praise.  But  we  have  a  sacrifice,  and  are 
therefore  able  to  distinguish  between  the  highest  honor  we 
render  to  His  saints,  and  the  supreme  worship  we  render  to 
Him.  Supreme  religious  worship  is  sacrifice,  and  sacrifice 
we  offer  to  God  only,  never  to  any  creature. 

The  Protestant  may  speak  of  internal  sacrifices,  those  of  a 


220  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

broken  heart,  and  of  inward  justice,  but  these  are  only  sacri- 
fices by  way  of  analogy,  and  what  should  always  accom- 
pany the  sacrifice  proper.  If  the  Protestant  tells  me  he 
has  in  the  interior  homage  of  contrition  and  real  submission  of 
himself  a  distinct  and  peculiar  worship  of  God,  I  must  tell 
him  in  return  that  then  he  must  not  call  the  veneration  we  ren- 
der to  Mary  Mariolatry,  because  this  homage  and  submission  in 
the  sense  he  means,  we  never  offer  to  .her.  If  he  has  some- 
thing in  this  interior  homage  that  pertains  to  supreme  worship, 
the  worship  of  Latria,  he  must  bear  in  mind  that  we  do  not 
offer  it  to  the  saints,  and  therefore  our  veneration  of  them  is 
not  "  idolatry  ";  if  he  has  not  something  of  this  sort,  then  he 
does  not  himself  offer  any  worship  proper  to  God,  external  or 
internal,  and  therefore  has  in  no  sense  any  worship  to  offer  to 
God  of  a  higher  order  than  that  which  we  offer  to  Mary  and 
the  Saints.  Hence  Catholics  are  not  surprised  when  Protest- 
ants accuse  them  of  Mariolatry.  Not  one  out  of  five  thousand 
knows  what  he  is  talking  about. 

The  simple  truth  is,  that  the  Protestant,  including  the  "  true 
Catholic  "  Ritualist,  rejects  the  veneration  of  Mary,  because  he 
does  not  believe  in  the  Incarnation,  and  his  calling  it  Mariol- 
atry is  only  a  proof  that  he  "  dissolves  Jesus,"  and  does  not  be- 
lieve that  salvation  comes  from  God  in  the  fiesh,  from  God 
whose  nature  is  human  nature  as  well  as  divine  nature.  The 
honor  we  render  to  Mary  is  in  the  last  analysis  the  honor  we 
pay  to  the  sacred  mystery  of  the  Incarnation,  and  either  it  is 
idolatry  to  worship  the  human  nature  of  Christ,  that  is,  God 
in  His  human  nature,  or  our  devotion  to  Mary  is  not  idolatry. 
The  first,  none  but  a  Unitarian  dare  assert,  and  therefore  none 
other  dare  deny  the  last. 

Scientific  Theology  has  its  technical  terms,  as  philosophic 
and  physical  science  have  theirs.  Hence  the  words — Latria., 
Dulia,  and  Tlyperdulia — used  in  dogmatic  treatises  on  the 
subject.  Our  whole  doctrine  and  practice,  then,  in  this  partic- 
ular, as  fully  understood  by  every  Catholic  child,  is  expressed 
in  the  three  following  propositions : 

1st.  We  give  to  God  alone,  on  account  of  His  infinite  per- 
fections, the  supreme  homage  of  adoration,   which   is  due 


A  Rejoindee.  221 

to  Him  alone,  and  which  is  called  by  CatlK  Mo  Tlieo- 
logians  —  Latvia.  Protestants,  including  small  liitualists, 
repeat  in  the  Nineteenth  century  the  slander  of  faustiis, 
the  old  Manichean  heretic.  I  commend  to  both  St.  Au- 
gustine's answer  to  Faustus,  as  true  now  as  when  that  old 
"  Romanist "  gave  it :  "  With  that  worship  which  in  Greek  is 
called  latreia  (in  Latin  it  cannot  be  expressed  by  one  word), 
as  it  is  a  kind  of  service  properly  due  to  the  Divinity,  we 
neither  worship,  nor  teach  to  worship,  other  than  the  one  God." 
Contra  Fauatum,  L.  20,  C.  21. 

2d.  We  honor  angels  and  saints  as  God's  servants  and 
friends,  with  an  homage  which  they  deserve  as  such,  and  which 
is  altogether  different  from  that  which  we  pay  to  God ;  and 
this  veneration  of  the  saints  goes  by  the  theological  name  of 
Dulia. 

3d.  We  honor  in  a  special  manner  among  the  Saints  the 
Virgin  Mother,  Queen  of  all  angels  and  saints,  on  account  of 
her  eminent  sanctity  and  her  sublime  and  most  intimate  rela- 
tionship with  the  adorable  Trinity ;  since  the  Word  of  God, 
who  is  from  all  eternity  begotten  of  the  Father,  and  consub- 
stantial  with  Him,  was  in  the  fullness  of  time  begotten  of  her, 
taking  to  Himself  from  her  immaculate  body  our  human 
nature.  This  special  honor  which  we  pay  to  the  Virgin 
Mother  of  God  is  called — Ilyperdulia,  the  homage  paid  to  the 
most  highly  privileged  creature,  but  as  to  a  creature,  and 
therefore  never  to  be  compared  with  the  worship  which  we 
give  to  God. 

Is  there  any  "  idolatry,"  "  apostasy,"  "  infidelity,"  or  "  im- 
piety "  in  this  ?  I  am  defending  the  creed  of  my  heart  and  of 
my  mind,  the  creed  of  the  Catholic  Church,  against  the  wan- 
ton insults  and  vindictive  slanders  of  the  Vicar,  and  I  appeal 
to  even  the  smouldering  spark  of  that  tenderness  implanted  by 
God  in  every  man's  breast  and  still  more  in  every  woman's.  If 
the  Incarnation  is  the  sole  fountain  of  life,  grace,  and  benedic- 
tion to  all  God's  intelligent  creatures,  and  some  receive  more 
and  some  less  from  that  Divine  Treasury, — is  it  "  idolatry  "  to 
hold  that  she  in  whom  the  stupendous  mystery  was  actually 
accomplished,  with  her  own  consent,  received  a  fuller  measure 


222  Ipse,  Irsx,  Ipsum. 

tlian  others,  whose  consent  was  never  asked,  wlio  approach  it 
from  afar,  and  only  accept  it  by  faith  ?  If  to  toucli  even  the 
''garment"  of  her  Creator  and  Son  was  to  feel  tlie  mij^lit  of 
His  Divinity,  so  that  "  virtue  went  out  of  Ilim,"  and  the  weak 
became  strong, — is  it  "  idolatry  "  to  say  that  she,  who  bore  Tlini 
in  her  womb,  who  nourished  Him  at  her  breasts,  who  enfolded 
I  Him  in  her  arms,  and  who  caressed  Him  with  her  lips,  was 
transfigured  by  a  union  with  the  Living  God  which  "  The 
Seven  Spirits  before  the  Throne  "  would  not  have  been  able 
to  endure,  and  received  from  the  Almighty  the  filial  embraces 
which  the  Seraphim  would  not  have  dared  to  accept?  If  at  the 
sound  of  His  voice  the  dead  stood  up,  the  winds  were  hushed, 
and  the  demons  fled  away, — is  it  "  idolatry  "  to  believe  that 
she,  who  listened  to  that  voice  for  vhirty  years,  speaking  as  it 
never  spoke  to  man  or  angel,  and  revealing  unimaginable 
abysses  of  light  which  no  other  creature  could  have  seen  and 
lived,  that  she  derived  some  special  benefit  from  what  she  saw 
and  heard,  and  that  her  wisdom  transcended  all  that  human 
thoughts  can  conceive,  because  she  alone  had  for  her  teacher 
the  Uncreated  "Wisdom  of  God  ?  If  to  look,  for  one  brief 
moment,  on  His  adorable  Face,  which  is  the  Light  of  Heaven, 
would  seem  to  us  the  most  transporting  joy  which  a  creature 
could  ask  or  obtain;  what  is  it  to  have  watched  that  Face 
with  worshipful  love  day  after  day  and  year  after  year — to 
have  dwelt  for  weeks  and  months  together  in  the  same  house, 
and  sat  at  the  same  table— to  have  touched  at  one  time  His 
omnipotent  Hand,  at  another  His  sacred  Head — to  have  looked 
into  the  eyes  of  the  God-Man  and  seen  the  movement  of  His 
divine  lips — and  to  have  done  all  this  with  an  unceasing  adora- 
tion, by  day  and  by  night,  more  perfect  than  ever  was  ofi"ered 
to  their  Almighty  King  by  the  greatest  princes  of  the  heavenly 
court?  Is  it,  too,  "idolatry"  to  claim  that  these  soul-dazzling 
thoughts  suggest  motives  for  devotion  to  Mary,  much  more  the 
conviction  that  she  is  the  Queen  of  angels  and  men,  as  well  as 
the  Mother  of  God  ? 

Again :  If  the  share  which  He  assigned  to  this  Incompara- 
ble Creature  in  the  work  of  our  salvation  was  present  to 
His  thoughts  even  in    the  supreme  hour    of    His    agony, 


A  liiyoiNDEu.  223 

eo  that  His  last  words  from  tlic  Cross  to  each  of  Ilig 
elect  was  tliis :  "  BehoU  tliy  Mother  !  "—is  it  "  idolatry  "  to 
recognize  an  office  so  aet  forth,  to  call  lier  our  Mother  hecause 
she  was  His,  and  totrend)le  lest  we  forfeit  the  protection  which 
lie  wills  her  to  extend  to  all  His  children  and  hersi  If  she 
was  the  Mother  of  the  Natural  Body  of  Christ,  which  derived 
from  her  its  life,  and  the  supply  of  all  its  needs, — is  it  '"  idola- 
try "  to  believe  that  He  made  her  the  Mother  of  Ilis  Mystical 
I'ody  also,  that  the  lower  was  included  in  the  higher,  or  that 
He  willed  her  to  do  for  His  Cliurch  what  He  made  her  worthy 
to  do  for  Himself?  If  the  Divine  Word,  by  whom  all  things 
were  made,  "  was  auhjeot  to  "  His  own  creature,  as  a  child  is 
subject  to  his  mother,  and  Mary  ruled  Him  who  rules  the 
universe, — is  it  "  idolatry  "  to  suppose  that  she  has  any  intluence 
over  Him  now,  that  He  continues  to  treat  her  as  a  Mother, 
or  that  He  grants  requests  which  she  presents  to  Him  in  heaven, 
because  He  obeyed  so  promptly  those  which  she  addressed  to 
Him  on  earth?  If  He  wrought  His  tirst  miracle  to  give 
pleasure  to  her,  and  to  relieve  a  transient  pang  which  had 
moved  her  gentle  pity,  and  if  He  did  this,  as  she  evidently 
knew  He  would,  though  "  the  hour  was  n  3t  yet  come," — is  it 
"idolatry"  to  suppose  that  she  still  continues  to  call  His  atten- 
tion to  the  wants  of  her  clients,  or  that  He  continues  to  supply 
them  at  her  word  ?  If  His  sacred  Passion  was  the  expiation 
of  our  guilt,  who  were  not  consulted  about  it,  and  neither  aj)- 
proved  nor  dissuaded  it,  but  are  constantly  renewing  it  by  our 
sins, — is  it  "  idolatry  "  to  praise  and  exalt  her  who  generously 
acquiesced,  for  the  love  of  us,  in  the  death  of  that  dear  Son  to 
whom  she  had  given  birth  ?  If  the  Precious  Blood  which  was 
shed  on  the  Cross  cancelled  death,  and  satisfied  the  justice  of 
God, — is  it  "'idolatry"  to  assert,  as  one  of  her  titles  to  our 
reverence,  that  this  life-giving  Blood,  by  which  we  are  saved, 
first  flowed  in  Mary's  veins  ? 

Once  more :  If  to  have  been  only  a  servant  of  God  shall 
win,  in  spite  of  defects  and  shortcomings,  such  a  recompense 
as  "  it  hath  not  entered  the  heart  of  man  to  conceive," — is  it 
"  idolatry  "  to  imagine  that  anything  higher  was  reserved  for 
her  whom  He  chose  to  be  His   mother,  and  whom  He  had 


224  Ii'8i:,  Ipsa,  Ii'slm. 

already  made  so  great  by  the  majesty  of  His  gifts,  that  nothing 
could  make  her  greater  but  the  glory  of  her  maternity  'i  It" 
Catholics  have  never  ceased  to  adore  the  Divinity  of  her  Son, 
and  to  worship  the  sacred  mysteries  of  the  Trinity  and  the  In- 
carnation ;  and  if  heretics,  after  professing  to  refuse  devotion 
to  her  only  out  of  reverence  for  God,  have  come  in  every  land, 
to  doubt  or  deny  the  highest  truths  of  Revelation, — is  it  "  idola- 
try ''  to  hold  that  the  former  proves  devotion  to  her  to  he  the 
safeijuard  of  faith  ^  and  to  see,  in  the  latter,  evidence  that  men 
who  begin  by  declining  to  honor  the  mother  are  sure  to  end  by 
blaspheming  the  Son '{  Tiie  Anglo-ritualist  Union  Review, 
quoted  in  the  second  letter  of  this  Rejoinder,  proves  this.  It 
says :  ^^Westorianisin,^''  that  is  a  denial  of  Christ's  humanity, 
^''prevails  to  a  very  great  extent  among  English  Chii^'chmen, 
and  its  withering  ejfects  are  very  difficult  to  shake  off  even  hy 
those  who  have  long  become  wthodox  in  their  theoretical 
creed.''^  Terrible  and  affrighting  confession  !  "/;!  is  also  trxie^"* 
the  Review  adds,  "  and  deserves  c&nsideration,  that  there  has 
been  hitherto  no  marked  tendency  to  heresy  on  the  subject  of  the 
Incarnation  among  Roman  Catholics,  while  where  tJie  dignity 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin  has  been  underrated,  heresies  have  speed- 
ily crept  in.''^    I  refer  your  readers  to  the  full  quotation. 

Lastly :  If  Anglicans  and  Ritualists  are  distinguished,  first, 
by  indifference,  and  then  by  dislike,  to  the  blessed  Mary  until 
"they  can  no  longer  hear  her  named  without  feeling  tormented 
as  were  the  demoniacs  by  the  presence  of  our  Lord,  and  their 
liatred  finds  too  often  vent  in  blasphemies  which  belong  not  to 
man,  but  to  those  evil  spirits  which  then  possess  them," — is  it 
"  idolatry "  to  find  in  this  a  verification  of  the  words  which 
were  spoken  from  the  beginning :  "  I  will  put  enmities  between 
thee  and  the  woman,  and  thy  seed  and  her  seed,"  and  to  remind 
the  Yicar  of  the  lessons  for  him  in  the  peaceful  stability  of 
Catholics  who  honor  Mary,  compared  with  the  dismal  apostasy 
of  the  theological  "  bone  of  his  bone,"  who  contemn  her,  not- 
withstanding the  famous  "  sermon "  forced  from  him  by  his 
necessities  in  this  discussion  ? ' 

'  See  Marshall's  My  Clerical  Friends. 


A  Rejoinder.  225 

LETTER  XVIII. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IP8UM — A    REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sib, — lu  my  last  two  letters  I  was  occupied  in  stating  the 
true  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  and  in  drawing  from  it  some 
idea  of  Mary's  greatness.  I  have  made  it  clear  that  in  the 
hierarchy  of  creatures  the  highest  place  must  needs  Ijelong  to 
her  through  whom  the  Creator  received  a  created  nature.  In 
the  Incarnation  the  spheres  of  the  Infinite  and  the  Finite 
touched  at  a  point.  In  the  finite  sphere  that  point  was  Mary, 
In  this  truth  Protestants  ought  to  discover  that  there  is  a  sig- 
nificance. What  was  her  greatness  ?  Was  it  that  she  was  the 
mother  of  a  great  Prophet  ?  No !  To  be  the  mother  of  the 
greatest  child  of  earth  that  the  Jew  of  old,  or  the  later  Nestorian, 
could  conceive — this  was  not  Mary's  greatness.  She  was  not 
the  mother  of  the  highest  mere  creature ;  she  was  herself  the 
highest  in  the  scale  of  mere  creatures,  because  the  Creator  was, 
in  His  humanity,  her  Son.  That  which  we  know  of  God's  serv- 
ants is  their  work.  The  work  allotted  to  Mary  was  the  Divine 
Maternity.  Those  who  admit  that  this  immeasurable  gift  was 
hers,  yet  see  nothing  in  it.  who  speak  as  if  it  was  hers  by  acci- 
dent, and  might  have  equally  been  another's — whereas  it  was 
hers  by  an  original  predestination,  with  her  solemn  consent, 
and  in  concurrence  with  the  plenary  grace  which  prepared  her 
for  it, — those  who  believe  that  not  a  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground 
without  God's  will,  yet  who  find  nothing  noteworthy  in  the 
highest  elevation  to  which  God  has  ever  advanced  the  creature 
formed  in  His  own  image — such  persons  "  have  eyes  and  see 
not."  It  is  not  from  any  real  force  in  the  objections  urged  by 
Protestants  that  their  blindness  in  this  matter  arises.  It  comes 
from  the  superficiality  of  the  unspiritual  intelligence,  hardness 
of  heart,  and  consequent  lack  of  spiritual  insight.  To  believe 
vitally  in  matters  of  religion,  one  must  love :  "  With  the  heart 
man  helieveth  unto  salvation.''^  As  Christianity  built  upon  the 
heart  originally,  so  it  must  vanish  out  of  the  world — and  the 


226  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

process  may  be  so  gradual  as  to  be  imperceptible — in  propor- 
tion as  a  decay  of  charity  makes  the  heart  superficial  by  mak- 
ing it  hard.  The  Pagan  nature  was  hard,  harder  even  in  the 
polished  Greek  than  in  the  rough  Roman,  and  for  this  reason 
it  was  superficial  and  vain,  Greek  art  loved  the  beautiful,  and 
could,  on  occasion,  show  forth  the  terrible ;  but  the  pathos  that 
everywhere  underlies  human  life  it  could  not  feel,  or  chose  to 
ignore.  Pagan  philosophy  was  like  Pagan  art.  It  was  super- 
ficial and  hard,  and  for  that  reason  it  was  vain.  It  was  proud 
of  the  body  and  proud  of  the  mind  ;  and  in  a  balanced  con- 
dition of  both,  it  placed  its  ideal  of  perfection.  But  Christi- 
anity exalted  the  soul,  in  which  alone  is  to  be  found  the  charac- 
teristic excellence  of  humanity.  The  intellect  is  a  feverish 
activity  within  a  narrow  sphere ;  the  human  soul  has  a  passive 
power  in  the  depth  of  which  lies  the  boundless  receptivity  of 
Faith.  In  what  Paganism  would  have  despised  as  the  soft,  the 
feeble,  the  womanly  in  human  nature,  lay  that  which  united 
with  weakness  the  strength  conceded  to  weakness,  and 
the  gift  of  spiritual  fruitfulness.  This  is  why  the  Prot- 
estant intelligence  so  often  fails  to  see  the  greatness  of 
Mary.  It  fancies  itself  shocked  when  she  is  called  the  "  high- 
est of  creatures";  yet  if  some  German  dreamer  or  mystic  un- 
dertook to  prove  that  St.  Michael  or  St.  Gabriel  wei;e  the  high- 
est of  creatures,  it  would  find  nothing  alarming  in  such  ele- 
vation. Nay,  if  it  chanced  to  light  on  a  text  or  two,  wliich,  in 
its  estimation,  assigned  that  rank  to  the  Blessed  Virgin,  with  a 
better  theology,  a  whole  world  of  false  philosophy  might,  per- 
haps, melt  like  mist ;  and  those  who  have  persuaded  themselves 
that  the  veneration  of  the  highest  creature  puts  her  in  the  place 
of  God  might  discover — what  a  true  Theism  teaches  the  child 
and  the  unlearaed  believer — that  between  the  Infinite  and  the 
Finite,  whether  in  the  highest  or  the  lowest  example  of  the 
latter,  the  distance  must  ever  remain  infinite. 

Again  :  In  this  attitude  of  the  Protestant  mind  towards  Mary, 
ever  blessed,  I  find  a  parallel  to  its  treatment  of  our  dear  Lord 
Himself.  Not  onl_>  those  who  walked  with  Him  in  the  days 
of  His  humiliation  did  not  know  Him,  but  even  now,  after  His 
kingdom  has  been  established  for  nearly  nineteeix  centuries 


A  TIejoindeb.  227 

upon  earth,  multitudes  deny  His  Divinity,  and  vindicate  that 
denial  out  of  the  Gospel ;  while  other  multitudes  who  think 
that  they  helieve  it,  dishelieve  it,  unconsciously  (I  hope)  assign- 
ing to  Him  a  double  Personality  as  well  as  two  Natures,  and 
denying,  consequently,  that  His  mother  is  the  "Mother  of 
God."    Holy  Scripture  is  confessedly  appealed  to  both  by  those 

•  who  assail  and  those  who  confess  the  Divinity  of  Christ.  It  is 
ajjpealed  to  no  less  by  those  who  assail  and  those  who 
confess  the  greatness  of  Mary.  As  to  the  place  as- 
signed to  others  in  the  Scriptures — to  Moses,  to  David, 
to  St.  Paul,  or  St.  John — there  is  no  doubt.  The  Bible 
is  only  challenged  on  both  sides  in  the  case  of  those  two 
whose  position,  though  infinitely  ■unequal,via.&  alike  exceptional 
— the  Creator  Incarnate  and  the  creature  who  was  made  the 
instrument  of  the  Incarnation.  Dr.  Jebb,  Bishop  of  Limerick, 
was  a  prelate  of  that  defunct  Irish  Establishment  so  long  an 
incubus  and  a  hlotch  upon  Catholic  Ireland.  He,  who  with 
Alexander  Knox,  in  some  sort  anticipated  the  High  Church 
movement  in  England,  (see  Contemporary  Review,  August, 
1887,)  makes  a  striking  statement  in  one  of  his  works.  The 
Eoman  Catholic  Church,  he  says,  has  been  preserved  by  a 
special  Providence,  because  it  alone  was  found  to  be  the  iiiex- 
})ugnable  citadel  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity — the  various 
Protestant  bodies  having  always  betrayed  a  tendency  to  Arian- 
ism  or  Unitarianism.  No  wonder  that  it  should  be  thus  with 
them.     Arguments  strictly  analogous  to  those  urged  against 

,  the  greatness  of  Mary  are  used  against  the  Divinity  of  her 
Son ;  and  the  same  general  objection  is  made,  viz. :  That  so 
great  a  mystery,  if  revealed  at  all,  must  needs  have  been  re- 
vealed plainly.  We  meet,  too,  identically  the  same  misconcep- 
tions. "  What  you  give  to  Mary,"  urges  one  objector,  "  you 
take  from  Christ."  "  What  you  give  to  Christ,"  the  Unitarian 
adds,  "  you  take  from  God."  One  would  imagine  the  Vicar  sided 
with  the  Unitarian  from  the  exulting  magnanimity  with  which 
he  surrenders  to  him  the  testimony  of  the  "  Three  Heavenly 
Witnesses"  (1  John  v.  7,  8),  omitted  in  the  Revised  Version. 
I  had  rather  say  that  the  world  could  better  spare  a  whole  bench 
of  Anglican  Bishops — the  whole  Lambeth  Conference — than 


228  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

one  single  verse  of  Holy  Writ  which  bears  wdtness  to  Christ's 
Divinity  and  the  mystery  of  the  Blessed  Trinity. 

Mary's  maternity,  which  was  the  crown  of  creation,  and  the 
way  by  which  its  Creator  became  its  Redeemer,  conferred  upon 
her  a  greatness  which  cannot  be  augmented.  Even  the  wokli> 
goes  on  repeating  that  it  was  this  idea  that  elevated  woman- 
hood, and  led  the  way  to  a  spiritual  civilization  ;  yet  what  that 
idea  is,  it  can  hardly  answer  in  detail.  The  thought  of  her 
trembles  on  the  surface  of  its  troubled  intelligence  like  the 
dawn  upon  a  lake.  In  its  knowledge,  and  even  in  its  ignorance, 
it  is  reverential.  It  reverences  in  her  the  image  of  her  Son. 
It  recognizes  also  her  own  image  in  the  Saints,  and  in  those 
most  Uke  the  Saints  upon  earth.  I  could  fill  a  column  with 
tributes  from  Byron,  Wordswortli,  Coleridge,  Holmes,  Long- 
fellow, Willis,  and  Poe.  The  Ritualist  controversialist  of  the 
Littledale  stripe  alone  is  bitter  when  he  treats  of  her.  The 
world,  so  far  as  it  does  not  absolutely  disown  its  Divine  Lord, 
pays  a  homage  it  scarcely  intends  to  pay  to  the  great  maternal 
sanctity.  This  is  not  wonderful.  The  world  is  protected  even 
by  indifferentism  itself  from  some  aberrations — from  that  dis- 
torted vision,  for  ir^soancc,  which  is  produced  by  such  polemical 
fanaticism  as  I  am  now  considering ;  and  the  common  sense  on 
which  it  prides  itself  teaches  it  that  the  Religion  of  the  Incar- 
nation must  ever  be,  what  it  has  ever  been,  the  cause  of  "Jesus 
and  Mary^  The  Catholic  Church  is  the  church  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, and  therefore  only  in  her  are  "  Jesus  and  Mary  "  to  be 
found  ever  and  inseparably  united — only  there  are  they  truly 
at  home.  Let  me  prove  all  this  out  of  the  mouths  of  Anglican 
witnesses. 

"  The  pious  and  affectionate  Bishop  Hall,"  as  Pusey  calls 
him,  writes: 

*'  But  how  gladly  do  we  second  the  Angel  in  the  praise  of 
her,  which  was  more  ours  than  His !  How  justly  do  we  bless 
her,  whom  the  Angel  pronounces  blessed !  How  worthily  is 
she  honored  of  men,  whom  the  Angel  proclaims  blessed  of 
God  1  0  blessed  Mary,  he  cannot  bless  thee,  he  cannot  honor  thee 
too  much,  that  deifies  thee  not!  That  which  the  angel  said  of 
thee,  thou  hast  prophesied  of  thyself ;  we  believe  the  Angel, 


A  Ee-joindeb.  229 

and  thee :  'All  generations  shall  call  thee  blessed,'  by  the  Fruit 
of  whose  womb  all  generations  are  blessed." 

Bishop  Pearson,  styled  by  Pusey  "  exact  and  theological," 
writes : 

''  The  necessity  of  believing  our  Saviour  thus  to  be  '  born  of 
the  Virgin  Mary,'  will  appear  both  in  respect  of  her  who  was 
the  mother,  and  of  Him  Who  was  the  Son. 

"  In  respect  of  her  it  was  therefore  necessary  that  we  might 
perpetually  preserve  an  esteem  of  her  person,  proportionable 
to  so  high  a  dignity.  It  was  her  own  prediction, '  From  hence- 
forth all  generations  shall  call  me  blessed ';  but  the  obligation 
is  ours  to  call  her,  to  esteem  her  so.  If  Elizabeth  cried  out 
with  so  loud  a  voice, '  Blessed  art  thou  amongst  women,'  when 
Christ  was  but  newly  conceived  in  her  womb,  what  expressions 
of  honor  and  admiration  can  we  think  sufficient,  now  that 
Christ  is  in  heaven,  and  that  mother  with  Him  ?  Far  be  it 
from  any  Christian  to  derogate  from  that  special  privilege 
granted  her,  which  is  incommunicable  to  any  other.  We  can- 
not bear  too  reverend  a  regard  unto  the  '  Mother  of  our  Lord,' 
60  long  as  we  give  her  not  that  worship  which  is  due  unto  the 
Lord  Himself.  Let  us  keep  the  language  of  the  primitive 
church :  '  Let  her  be  honored  and  esteemed ;  let  Him  be  wor- 
shipped and  adored.'  " 

The  learned  but  controversial  Bishop  Hickes  writes : 

"God  the  Father^  who  was  to  prepare  a  body  for  His 
Eternal  Son,  as  it  is  written,  '  a  Body  hast  Thou  prepared  Me,' 
,  would  not  form  it  of  the  substance  of  a  sinful  woman  ;  but  His 
own  essential  holiness,  as  well  as  the  mysterious  decency  of  the 
dispensation,  would  prompt  Him  to  form  it  of  the  substance  of 
one,  that  like  the  king's  daugliter  in  the  psalm,  was '  all-glorious 
wiBtlin,'  and  a  pure  and  spotless  Virgin,  both  in  body  and 
mind.  The  fullness  of  the  Godhead  would  not  dwell  bodily 
in  a  wicked  woman,  nor  would  she  be  deceived  and  led  away 
by  the  serpent,  whose  heel  was  to  bruise  the  serpent's  head. 
{Here  is  Ipsa  from  one  of  the  Vicar'' s  oivn  Bishops  !)  To 
be  chosen  for  the  Mother  of  God  was  the  greatest  honor  and 
favor  that  ever  God  conferred  upon  any  human  creature. 
None  of  the  special  honors  and  favors  that  He  did  to  any  of 


230  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

the  saints  before  or  since  are  equivalent  to  the  honor  of  being 
the  Mother  of  God,  and,  therefore,  we  may  be  sure  that  God 
who  said, '  Them  that  honor  Me,  I  will  honor,'  would  not  have 
done  so  great  an  honor  to  any  daughter  of  Abraham,  but  to 
one  who  best  deserved  it,  who  had  no  superior  for  holiness 
upon  earth.  If  we  had  no  particular  account  of  her  graces,  we 
might  naturally  conclude  all  this  from  the  history  of  our  Lord's 
Incarnation ;  for  nothing  less  than  a  superlative  hohness  could 
receive  such  a  testimony  of  Divine  honor  from  the  Holy 
Trinity.  She  was,  as  it  were,  the  spouse  of  God,  Co-parent 
with  Him  of  the  wonderful  Imnianuel,  who  was  God  and 
man,  '  God  of  the  substance  of  the  Father,  begotten  before  the 
worlds ;  and  man  of  the  substance  of  His  Holy  Mother,  born 
in  the  world,'  'Perfect  God  and  perfect  Man,'  'yet  not  two 
but  one  Christ.'  ....  And  therefore  it  is  our  duty,  who  have 
the  benefit  of  her  example,  to  honor  and  celebrate  her  name 
and  commemoraij  her  virtues,  and  set  forth  her  praises,  in 
whom  there  was  a  concurrence  of  so  many  Divine  accomplish- 
ments, etc.  If  the  names  of  other  saints  are  distinguished 
with  miniature,  hers  ought  to  shine  with  gold,  especially,  if  we 
consider  that  she,  of  all  the  virgin  daughters  of  Israel,  had  tlie 
honor  to  be  chosen  by  the  Holy  Trinity  for  the  mother  of  our 
Lord.  '  What  shall  be  done  to  the  woman  whom  the  King  of 
Kings  delighted  to  honor  ? '  Certainly  if  we  should  hold  our 
peace  and  refuse  to  praise  her  among  women,  the  stones  of  the 
church  would  cry  out,  'the  stone  shall  cry  out  of  the  wall,  and 
the  beam  of  the  timber  shall  answer  it.'  Wheresoever  tlie 
Gospel  is  preached,  that  which  she  hath  done  and  suffered  for 
our  Lord  ought  to  be  spoken  of  for  a  memorial  of  her,  from 
whom  He  took  that  very  Body  which  was  crucified,  and  that 
precious  Blood  which  was  shed  for  the  remission  of  our  sin." 

Again,  the  Kev.  Dr.  Frank  writes : 

"  I  shall  not  need  to  tell  you  who  this  '  she '  or  who  this 
'  Him.'  The  day  rises  with  it  on  its  wings.  The  day  wrote 
it  with  the  first  ray  of  the  morning  sun  upon  the  posts  of  the 
world.  The  angels  sang  it  in  their  choirs,  the  morning  stars 
together  in  their  course.  The  Virgin  Mother,  the  Eternal 
Son  I     The  most  blessed  among  women,  the  fairest  of  the  sons^ 


A  IIkjoinder.  231 

of  men.  The  woman  clothed  with  the  sun,  the  sun  com- 
passed with  the  woman  /  she  the  gate  of  heaven ;  He  the 
King  of  Glory,  that  came  forth.  She  the  mother  of  the  Ever- 
lasting God  :  He  God  without  a  mother ;  God  blessed  for  ever- 
more.    Great  persons  as  ever  met  upon  a  day." 

For  uttering  thoughts  not  more  beautiful  than  these,  St. 
John  of  Damascus,  in  the  "Mission  Chapel,"  so  called,  was 
characterized  as  a  "  blind  guide  leading  the  blind  multitude ! " 

Again,  George  Herbert  writes : 

I  would  address 
My  vows  to  thee  most  gladly,  blessed  Maid, 
And  mother  of  my  God,  in  my  distress. 

Thou  art  the  holy  mine,  whence  came  the  f^'Bi, 
The  great  restoration  for  all  decay 

In  young  and  old. 
Thou  art  the  cabinet  where  the  jewel  lay — 
Chiefly  to  thee  would  I  my  soul  unfold. 


I  can  fitly  close  these  quotations  with  Keble's  beautiful  little 
poem  on  "  The  Annunciation,"  from  "  The  Christian  Year." 
Your  readers  will  remember  thfit  Keble,  with  Pusey  and  Car- 
dinal Newman,  started,  in  1833,  the  "  Tractarian  Movement," 
from  which  Ritualism  "  cropped  up  "  a  few  years  ago.  Froude 
says  that  Keble  and  Pusey  were  the  ciphers — Newman  the 
indicating  number.  Keble  lived  and  died  a  quiet  country 
parson  of  the  English  religion  ;  Pusey,  years  before  his  death, 
practically  quitted  it  without  formally  joining  the  Catholic 
Church,  although  he  preached  and  practiced  nearly  all  her 
doctrines,  while  Newman,  drawing  the  logical  conclusions 
from  their  common  premises,  reverted  to  the  old  religion,  be- 
came a  "benighted  Romanist,"  and  preserved,  at  least,  his 
intellectual  self-respect. 

I  ask  your  readers'  attention  to  the  last  stanza  of  the  poem. 
The  Vicar  has  given  us  nothing  more  "extravagant"  from 
"  Liguon  and  the  Raccolta  "  than  the  utterances  of  Keble  and 
Bishop  Hall,  to  say  nothing  of  Hickes  and  Frank : 


232  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Ave  Maria  !  Blessed  Maid  I 
Lily  of  Eden's  fragrant  shade, 

Who  can  express  the  love, 
That  nurtured  thee,  so  pure  and  sweet, 
Making  thy  heart  a  shelter  meet 

For  Jesus'  Holy  Dove  ? 

Ave  Maria!    jn.' her  blest. 

To  whom,  caressing  and  caress'd, 

Clings  the  Eternal  Child : 
Favour'd  beyond  archangels'  dream. 
When  first  on  thee  with  tenderest  gleam 

Thy  new-born  Saviour  smiled. 

Ave  Maria !    Thou  whose  name 
All  hut  adoring  love  may  claim. 

Yet  may  we  reach  thy  shrine; 
For  He,  thy  Son  and  Saviour,  vows 
To  crown  aU  lowly  lofty  brows 

With  love  and  joy  like  thine. 

These  quotations  well  express  the  thoughts  of  a  few  choice 
minds  in  Anglicanism,  but  alas!  they  are  not  Anglican 
thoughts.  The  Vicar  has  long  since  confessed  that  "  it  is  the 
hard  and  sorrowful  lot  of  the  English  Church  "  to  be  among 
those  who  dishonor  the  mother  of  God.  "Well  he  knows  that 
no  sectaries  have  surpassed,  few  have  equalled  Anglicans,  in 
ingratitude  and  irreverence  towards  her  in  whom  the  Most 
High  became  Incarnate.  These  thoughts  came  to  Anglican 
hearts  from  a  higher  spiritual  zone  than  that  whicli  can  only 
'  believe  in  a  motherless  Saviour,  as  it  believes  only  in  a  divided 
church — they  came  from  the  Church  of  the  Incarnation,  the 
home  of  "  Jesus  and  Mary." 


LETTER  XIX. 

IPSE,   IPSA,   IPSUM — A  REJOINDER. 

To  the  Ediim  of  the  Globe : 

Sib, — As  an  introduction  to  my  examination  of  the  quo- 
tations from  "  Liguori  and  the  Raccolta,"  T  devote  this  letter 


A  Rejoinder.  233 

to  Dr.  Pusey,  whom,  by  the  Vicar's  blundering  perverseness, 
your  readers  have  doubtless  set  down  as  a  witness  most  hostile 
to  us.  Indeed  I  propose  nothing  less  than  to  vindicate  his 
memory  against  the  dishonor  the  Vicar  seeks  to  put  upon 
it.  He  invokes  the  authority  of  Pusey's  name  to  cloak  his 
own  malice  and  ignorance,  and  uses  it  as  a  theological  scare- 
'  crow  to  divert  the  attention  of  logical  and  honest  Protest- 
ants from  his  own  humiliating  position.  He  makes  him 
sponsor  for  charges  against  the  Catholic  Church  at  which 
Pusey  would  stand  aghast.  This  is  an  injustice  to  Pusey 
which  I  cannot  permit.  After  Newman  had  become  in  Eng- 
land the  "Achilles  of  the  City  of  God,"  Pusey,  now  the 
"  Hector  of  a  doomed  Troy,"  labored  with  unbounded  zeal  and 
ability  for  fifty  years  to  propagate  some  of  the  most  funda- 
mental Catholic  dogmas.  His  essay  on  Baptismal  Regener- 
ation, scouted  by  bis  own  church  in  the  Privy  Council  judg- 
ment in  the  Gorham  case,  is  the  most  thorough  and  exhaustive 
one  in  English.  It  has  had  an  incalculable  influence  over  the 
theological  mind  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  England  and 
America  in  laying  the  foundation  of  a  right  belief  in  sacra- 
mental grace,  and  thus  preparing  the  way  for  the  reception 
of  the  entire  Catholic  system.  The  same  may  be  said,  in  part, 
respecting  the  doctrine  of  the  Real  Presence,  the  authority 
of  Tradition,  and  other  points.  By  dint  of  study,  meditation, 
and  prayer  he  worked  his  way  with  difficulty  through  thickets 
and  morasses  back  to  the  very  threshold  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
Why  should  I  stand  by  and  hear  his  name  dishonored  by 
one  who  to-day  ungratefully  enjoys  the  fruits  of  Pusey's  toil 
amid  the  wreckage  of  Christianity  in  the  Anglican  Establish- 
ment? Why  should  I  offer  a  stinted  homage  to  his  devout 
and  deeply  religious  spirit,  the  purity  and  goodness  of  his  life, 
and  the  profound  learning,  in  certain  departments,  which  he 
brought  to  the  service  of  the  Catholic  cause  ?  It  is  a  great  gain 
that  thousands  to-day  in  the  Anglican  Church  confess  truths 
revealed  by  God  which  they  once  blasphemed  or  ridiculed. 
And,  more  than  this,  it  is  a  gain  still  greater  that  by  degrees 
the  prejudices  which  have  so  long  veiled  the  minds  of  Angli- 
cans of  all  classes  in  Egyptian  darkness,  and  made  it  morally 


234  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

impossible  for  them  to  see  tlie  brightness  and  glory  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  have  already  been  removed  from  the  hearts 
of  thousands.  An  ordinary  Anglican,  fifty  years  ago,  really 
and  tinily  believed  all  the  monstrous,  almost  unimaginable 
horrors  which  have  been  handed  down  by  a  Protestant  tradi- 
tion to  the  dishonor  of  the  church.  Such  a  man  was,  humanly 
speaking,  as  little  likely  ever  even  to  think  of  becoming  a 
Catholic  as  to  think  of  becoming  a  Mahometan  or  a  Hindoo. 
He  never  thought  of  looking  into  a  Catholic  church,  or  of 
opening  a  CathoHc  book.  How  utterly  he  was  in  darkness  as 
to  what  it  all  meant  we  may  imagine,  when  such  a  man  as 
Cardinal  Kewman  records  that  as  late  as  1833,  when  he  had, 
been  for  some  years  ''  in  orders,"  and  had  already  written  his 
learned  work  on  the  Arians,  he  "  knew  nothing  of  the  presence 
of  the  Blessed  Sacrament "  in  the  Catholic  churches  into  which 
he  accidentally  strayed  while  waiting  at  Palermo  for  a  passage 
to  England.  Instead  of  this  totally  ignorant  generation  sin- 
cerely believing  that  all  the  points  in  which  the  "Koman 
Church  "  differed  from  their  own  were  "  pagan  superstitions  " 
and  "abominations,"  the  Ritualists  are  giving  us  a  generation 
thousands  of  which  will  have  been  trained  from  their  child- 
hood to  believe  that  all  the  distinctive  doctrines  of  the  Catholic 
Church  against  which  Protestants  have  for  centuries  been  blas- 
pheming, are  living  and  life-giving  truths — the  Real  Presence, 
the  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  Confession  and  Absolution,  the  Re- 
hgious  Life  and  Yows  and  the  Invocation  of  the  Saints.  All 
these  things,  which  the  last  generation  beheved  to  be  worse 
than  Paganism,  they  know  to  be  truth  and  life.  After  New- 
man's reversion  Pusey  continued  the  Tractarian  Movement  in 
the  Church  of  England  with  increased  vigor,  and  he  devoted  to 
it  every  power  and  faculty  he  possessed — position,  wealth,  learn- 
ing, and  intellect.  The  result  was  that  multitudes  of  souls  have 
been  brought  by  him  from  far-distant  wanderings  in  regions  of 
darkness  and  cold,  to  a  position,  as  yet,  indeed,  outside  the 
church,  but  yet  sufficiently  near  to  her  to  ensure  their  feeling 
her  attraction.  Besides,  how  many  of  his  disciples  have  now 
the  happiness  to  be  Catholics?  Outstripping  their  master, 
seeking  a  clearer  atmosphere  than  that  in  which  he  was  con- 


A  Rejoindek.  235 

tent  to  dwell,  a  broader  and  firmer  grasp  of  divine  verities 
than  that  which  he  possessed,  they  have  found,  one  after  an- 
other, their  way  to  the  region  of  light,  the  fullness  of  truth. 
Pius  IX.  used  to  liken  him  to  a  church  bell,  summoning  others 
to  the  household  of  faith,  but  remaining  himself  without. 
The  submission  of  so  many  of  his  valued  and  trusted  associ- 
ates to  the  Catholic  Church  was  a  great  sorrow  to  Puscy. 
Why  did  he  not  follow  them?  It  might  almost  seem,  to  hu-  ^ 
man  eyes,  as  if  his  excellences  and  virtues  merited  the  grace 
which  was  given  to  many  others  who,  as  far  as  human  judg- 
ment can  deem,  showed  far  less  disposition  to  faith.  A 
mighty  question,  indeed,  and  one  upon  which  all  speculation 
must  be  more  or  less  unsatisfactory.  For  myself,  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  express  my  helief  that  he  died  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  that  he  met  his  Maker  with  the  eternal 
sunshine  of  the  full-orbed  glory  of  Catholic  truth  beaming  in 
his  face. 

How  was  Pusey  treated  by  the  Anglican  Establishment 
which  he  labored  so  long  and  so  faithfully  to  Catholicize  and 
vivify  ?  Let  the  London  Times  answer :  "  By  the  concurrence 
of  an  infinite  number  of  witnesses  Dr.  Pusey  is  the  nominal 

founder  of  the  existing  phase  of  the  Church  of  England 

He  has  seen  an  incessant  warfare  of  controversy,  litigation,  and 
rival  demonstrations.  He  has  heard  of  more  hostile  charges 
than  man  could  remember  or  read.  But  he  has  seen  all  sides 
agree  in  acknowledging  Dr.  Pusey  to  be  the  author  of  this 
restoration  or  of  this  corruption.  It  is  he  that  has  scattered 
blessings  over  the  land  or  curses.  Half  the  English  theological 
world  has  reverenced  him  as  a  saint,  ....  Tialf  have  found  no 
charge  or  insinuation  too  bad  for  him.  It  is  Dr.  Pusey  who 
has  been  the  Reformer  or  the  Heresiarch  of  the  Century."  I 
beg  to  give  your  readers  a  sample  of  the  "  curses  "  attributed 
to  Pusey  as  reckoned  by  his  Low  Church  brethren.  Two 
months  before  Pusey's  death  the  Rev.  Mr,  Smelt,  speaking 
before  a  Bible  society,  concluded  his  speech  with  this  perora- 
tion :  "  If  we  '  take  stock '  of  the  result  of  two  generations  of 
Ritualistic  teaching,  we  find  that  {a)  our  schools  are  schools  of 
free-thought ;  (J)  our  churches  are  Mass-houses ;  {c)  our  litera- 


236  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscjm. 

ture  is  steeped  in  slcepticism  even  when  it  shrinks  from  an 
open  rejection  of  revelation  ;  (d)  license  revels  in  our  institu- 
tions ;  (e)  vice  riots  in  our  streets ;  (f)  an  ever  increasing  laxity 
of  morals  pervades  all  grades  of  society ;  ((/)  venality,  which 
does  but  correspond  to  the  absence  of  principle  among  public 
men,  is  rampant  throughout  the  constituencies ;  (A)  while  anar- 
chy, threatening  to  turn  to  rebellion,  meets  us  on  all  sides  and 
in  every  form !  Such,  when  we  sum  them  up,  are  the  fruits — 
call  them  rather  the^A*«^fruits,  for  there  are  worse  to  come,  of 
the  much-vaunted  Catholic  movement,  which  its  abettors  de- 
clared, and  its  dupes  believed,  was  destined  to  purify  the 
Church  and  revivify  the  State.  Such  is  the  price  we  have  to 
pay  for  converting  the  Protestant  Minister  into  the  Massing 
Priest !  May  God  in  His  mercy  forgive  us  and  send  us  help 
from  His  holy  place  ! "  This  I  take  from  that  amiable  Low 
Church  organ,  the  Pock.  Oxford  University,  which  Canon 
Liddon  says  may  *'  in  a  few  years  at  most "  cease  to  be  a  Chris- 
tian university,  suspended  Pusey  from  its  pulpit  for  two  years 
because  of  a  sermon  delivered  there  on  the  Real  Presence.  He 
declared  to  his  bishop,  Wilberforce,  his  belief  in  Purgatory 
and  the  Invocation  of  Saints,  and  the  bishop  scolded  and  tried 
to  "  bully  "  him.  The  preface  to  his  sermon  on  "  The  Entire 
Absolution  of  the  Penitent "  is  one  long  and  fervid  recom- 
mendation of  the  practice  of  Confession,  and  he  impresses  upon 
men  that  Confession  is  the  only  satisfactory  way  to  ensure  a 
quiet  conscience  and  that  therefore  it  is  ''  generally  necessary." 
He  acted  as  Confessor  and  Director  to  persons  of  all  classes  and  of 
both  sexes  all  over  England,  and  published  a  long  letter  in  de- 
fence of  the  principle  that  "  the  Church  of  England  leaves  her 
children  free  to  whom  to  open  their  griefs."  Again  Bishop  Wil- 
berforce, whose  daughter  and  three  of  whose  brothers  became 
Catholics,  "charged"  against  him.  "The  fact  remains,"  he 
says,  "  you  seem  to  me  to  be  habitually  assuming  tiie  place  and 
doing  the  work  of  a  Koman  Confessor,  and  not  that  of  an 
English  clergyman."  The  Bishop  then  prohibiied  him  from 
performing  any  ministerial  act  in  his  diocese.  Pusey  went 
right  on  adapting  Catholic  books  of  devotion  for  Anglican  use. 
Again  Wilberforce  fulminated  and  addressed  to  Pusey  these 


A  Kejoindeu.  28Z 

words :  "  Events  have  deepened  my  conviction  that  the  effect 
of  your  ministry  has  been  in  many  cases  to  lead  those  who  fol- 
low your  guidance  to  become  dissatisfied  with  the  pure  Scrij> 
tural  teaching  and  services  of  our  own  church  and  to  join  the 
.Roman  schism."  And  again  the  Bishop  tells  him :  "  You 
'nourish  amongst  those  whom  you  guide  religious  principles 
and  practices  for  which  the  Church  of  England  affords  no  war- 
rant, but  which  belong,  and  so  ultimately  surely  lead,  to  the 
Church  of  Rome."  Day  after  day  the  Bishop's  prophecies 
were  fulfilled  as  one  after  another  in  rapid  succession  Pusey's 
associates  and  adherents  became  Catholics.  I  cannot  enlarge 
on  this  now.  Dean  Hook  was  a  celebrated  moderate  High 
Churchman  in  these  times.  In  a  letter  to  The  Guardian  he  calls 
Pusey  and  hie  friends  "  Romanizer8,"and  sums  up  their  work  in 
these  words :  "I  now  find  them  calumniators  of  the  Church  of 
England,  and  vindicators  of  the  Church  of  Rome ;  palliating 
the  vices  of  the  Romish  system,  and  magnifying  the  deficien- 
cies of  the  Church  of  England ;  sneering  at  everything  Angli- 
can, and  admiring  everything  Romish ;  students  of  tlie  Breviary 
and  Missal,  disciples  of  the  schoolmen,  converts  to  mediceval- 
ism,  insinuating  Romish  sentiments,  circulating  and  republish- 
ing Romish  works;  introducing  Romish  practices  in  their 
private,  and  infusing  a  Romish  tone  into  their  public  devo- 
tions ;  introducing  the  Romish  confessional,  enjoining  Romish 
penances,  adopting  Romish  prostrations,  recommending  Roinish 
litanies,  muttering  the  Romish  shibboleth,  and  rejoicing  in  the 
cant  of  Romish  fanaticism,  assuming  sometimes  the  garh  of 
the  Romish  priesthood,  and  venerating  without  imitating  their 
celibacy,  defending  Romish  miracles,  and  receiving  as  true  the 
lying  legends  of  Rome;  almost  adoring  Romish  saints,  and 
complaining  that  we  have  had  no  saints  in  England  since  we 
purified  our  church  ;  explaining  away  the  idolatry,  and  pining 
for  the  Mariolatry  of  the  Church  of  Rome ;  vituperating  the 
Enghsh  Reformation,  and  receiving  for  the  truth  the  false  doc- 
trines of  the  Council  of  Trent,  etc.,  etc.  It  is  sometimes  asked 
why  we  should  be  continually  attacking  the  Church  of  Rome  ? 
When  this  question  is  put  to  us,  I  admire  the  subtlety,  but  not 
the  candor  of  the  querist.    It  is  not  against  EomanistSj  but 


238  Ii'8K,  Ipsa,  Ii-sum. 

against  Romanizers  tliat  we  write ;  against  those  who  are  doing 
the  work  of  the  Church  of  Rome  while  eating  the  breud  of  the 
Churcli  of  Enghmd."  For  all  the  facts  given  above  I  refer 
your  readers  to  the  "  Life  of  Bisliop  Wilherforce,"  London, 
1881 ;  and  the  "Life  of  Dean  Hook,"  LonJon,  1878. 

I  now  ask  your  readers'  attention  to  some  remarks  on  the 
Eirenicon^  often  referred  to  by  the  Vicar.  Here,  too,  he  has 
done  injustice  to  Pusey.  This  work  is  in  three  volumes.  The 
fimt  is  a  letter  to  Keble,  and  the  second  and  third,  severally, 
letters  to  Father  Newman  occasioned  by  his  reply  to  i\\Q  first. 
For  years  before  Pusey's  death  he  worked  earnestly  to  bring 
about  a  union  between  the  Catholic  and  Anglican  churches. 
He  was  dissatisfied  with  the  individual  secessions  to  Home  and 
desired  to  bring  about  a  *'  corporate  reunion,"  by  which  he  and 
his  party  ^'  through  mutual  explanations,"  might  go  over  to 
Rome  in  a  body — "  lolthout  calling  upon  the  Church  of  Home 
to  ahandon  anything  to  which  she  had  'pronounced  to  he  '  de 
fide ' " — of  faith.  These  are  Pusey's  very  words  {Eirenicon, 
vol.  2,  p.  7).  That  is  to  say,  he  was  ready  to  accept  all  the 
dogmatic  teaching  of  the  Catholic  Church.  "  I  have  long  been 
convinced,"  he  writes,  "  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  Council  of 
Trent  which  could  not  be  explained  satisfactorily  to  us,  if  it 
were  explained  authoritatively — i.  e.,  by  the  Roman  Church 
itself,  not  by  individual  theologians  only."  Pusey's  Letter  to 
tlie  London  WeeHy  Register,  Nov.  22,  1865,  written  to 
thank  the  editor  "  with  all  my  (his)  heart  for  your  (his)  kind- 
hearted  and  appreciative  review  of  my  (his)  Eirenicon?''  To 
promote  the  aspirations  of  this  Unionist  Movement  headed  by 
Pusey,  an  association  was  formed  known  as  the  "  Order  of 
Corporate  Reunion."  For  the  same  purpose  Pusey  says  he 
wrote  the  Eirenicon — a  simple  overture  for  peace,  as  the  word 
implies.  It  was  occasioned  by  a  letter  addressed  to  him  by 
Dr.  Manning,  entitled :  "  The  "Workings  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in 
the  Church  of  England" — in  which  the  Archbishop  urged 
upon  his  old  friend  that  all  who  believe  in  the  supernatural 
order,  in  the  revelation  of  Christianity,  in  the  inspiration  of 
Holy  Scripture,  in  the  divine  certainty  of  dogmatic  Tradition, 
in  the  divine  obligation  of  holding  no  communion  with  heresy 


A  Kejoindek.  239 

and  schism,  are  logically  drivon  in  upon  the  lines  of  the  only 
etronglKild  which  God  has  constituted  as  "  the  pillar  and  <i;round 
of  the  truth  " — the  Catl'-olic  Church.  I  have  this  letter  now 
before  me,  and  if  your  readers  desire  to  get  an  idea  of  the 
cogency  of  the  argument  by  which  the  appeal  to  Pusey  was 
supported,  let  them  read  the  article  by  Cardinal  Manning  in 
the  current  number  of  the  North  American  Rcvlev\  entitled : 
"7y<<?  Gladntone-IiujersoU  Contraversy:  The  Church  a  Witness 
to  Herself:' 

One  of  the  stumbling-blocks  in  the  way  of  the  reconciliation 
with  Rome  which  Pusey  sought,  was  the  devotion  of  Catholics 
to  the  Mother  of  God.  He  poured  into  the  first  volume  of  tlie 
Eirenicon  all  his  difficulties,  prepossessious,  and,  to  the  Catholic 
mind,  bewildering  misconceptions  and  apparently  perverse  mis- 
understandings on  the  subject,  but  he  said  not  a  word  about  his 
own  belief  on  the  greatness  of  Mary .  From  this  volume  the  Vicar 
lias  taken,  almost  verlatim,  that  "  wider  view  of  the  Roman 
cultus  of  Mary"  spread  out  in  his  last  "Stricture,"  and  with- 
out a  single  reference  to  the  second  volume  in  which  Pusey 
explained,  neutralized,  and  practically  retracted  the  violent 
criticisms  of  his  first  volume — as  I  will  show.  For  so  heinous 
a  crime  against  candor,  honesty,  and  truth,  and  the  memory  of 
an  honest-minded  man,  I  know  of  no  parallel  in  all  the  annals 
of  misrepresentation.  This  is  a  grave  misfortime  for  himself 
as  well  as  a  crying  injustice  to  Pusey.  And  now  to  the 
proof. 

Cardinal  (then  plain  Father)  Newman,  in  reply  to  the  first 
volume,  the  original  Eirenicon,  addressed  to  Pusey  his  famous 
letter,  than  which  there  has  never  been  written  a  more  mas- 
terly and  faultless  specimen  of  Patristic  and  Scriptural  exege- 
sis. Other  writers,  indeed,  had  catalogued  and  exposed  what 
the  Eirenicon  contained  of  misstatement,  misquotation,  unfair 
insinuation  and  conclusion.  But  the  appearance  of  Dr.  Xew- 
man  on  the  scene  was  that  "  of  the  great  Achilles  moving  to 
the  war,"  The  gleam  of  well-worn  armor  flashes  on  the  eye, 
and  the  attention  of  both  armies  is  riveted  on  him  as  he  lifts 
his  spear.     He  cannot  nmtter  his  favorite  motto ; 


240  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ii'sum. 

And  well  shall  they  perceive  that,  till  this  hour, 
I  paiised  from  war  (Iliad,  B.  xviii.,  L.  125) ; 

for  it  is  but  lately  that  he  struck  down  and  kicked  oflE  the 
field  the  swaggering  bully  Kingsley,  hardly  worthy  of  his 
steel.  It  is  different  now.  He  will  begin  in  true  Homeric 
fashion  with  a  complimentary  harangue  to  the  champion  on 
the  other  side ;  but  then  will  come  the  time  for  blows — blows 
of  terrible  force,  dealt  ont  with  that  gentle  affectionateness 
which  ever  characterized  the  friendship  of  these  two  great 
souls.  Dr.  Newman  begins  by  a  generous  tribute  to  Dr.  Pusey 
himself,  and  to  those  whom  he  is  supposed  to  influence.  He 
allows  him  to  have  every  right  to  mention  the  conditions  on 
which  he  proposes  to  become  a  Catholic,  as  well  as  the  rigiit  to 
state  what  it  is  that  he  objects  to,  as  requiring  explanation  in 
the  Catholic  system.  But  then  the  tone  changes  and  business 
begins.  Dr.  Newman  tells  his  old  friend  in  the  plainest 
way  that  "  tliere  is  much  both  in  the  matter  and  manner  of 
his  volume  calculated  to  wound  those  who  love  him  well,  but 
truth  more";  and  he  points  out  the  glaring  inconsistency 
of  "  professing  to  b*^  composing  an  Irenicon  while  treating 
Catholics  as  foes";  and  characterizes  in  his  happy  way,  the 
proceeding  of  Pusey  as  "  discharging  an  Olive  branch  as  from 
a  catapult."  "  The  hundred  pages  which  you  have  devoted  to 
the  subject  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,"  he  tells  him,  "  give  a  one- 
sided view  of  our  teaching  about  her."  Few  have  charac- 
terized these  pages  in  stronger  terms  than  Dr.  Newman.  lie 
asks  Pusey  :  "  What  could  an  Exeter  Hall  orator,  what  could 
a  Scotch  commentator  on  the  Apocalypse,  do  more  for  his  own 
side  of  the  controversy  by  the  picture  he  drew  of  us  i "  Fur- 
ther on  he  pointedly  reminds  him  that  he  all  (lie  time  hneio  het- 
ter.  This  brings  me  to  the  important  point.  After  a  proof 
from  the  Fathers  as  to  the  Catholic  doctrine  about  the  Blessed 
Virgin,  he  says  to  Pusey :  "  You  know  what  the  Fathers  assert ; 
but,  if  so,  have  you  not,  my  dear  friend,  been  unjust  to  your- 
self in  your  recent  volume,  and  made  far  too  much  of  the  dif- 
ferences which  exist  between  Anglicans  and  us  on  this  particu- 
lar point  ?     It  is  the  office  of  an  Irenicon  to  smooth  difficulties. 


A  Rejoinder.  241 

....  Had  you  happened  in  your  volume  to  introduce  your 
notice  of  our  teaching  about  the  Blessed  Virgin,  with  a  notice 
of  the  teaching  of  the  Fathers  concerning  lier,  which  you  fol- 
low, ordinary  men  would  have  considered  that  there  was  not 
much  to  choose  between  you  and  us.  Though  you  appealed 
ever  so  much,  in  your  defence,  to  the  authority  of  the  '  Un- 
divided Church,'  they  would  have  said  that  you,  who  had  such 
high  notions  of  the  Blessed  Mary,  were  one  of  the  last  men  . 
who  had  a  right  to  accuse  us  of  quasi-idolatry.  When  they 
found  you  with  the  Fathers  caUing  her  Mother  of  God,  Second 
Eve,  and  Mother  of  all  Living,  the  Mother  of  Life,  the  Morn- 
ing Star,  the  Mystical  New  Heaven,  the  Sceptre  of  Orthodoxy, 
the  AU-undefiled  Mother  of  Holiness,  and  the  like,  they  would 
have  deemed  it  a  poor  compensation  for  such  language,  that 
you  protested  against  ^er  being  called  a  Co-Redemptress  or  a 
Priestess.  And  if  they  were  violent  Protestants,  they  would 
not  have  read  you  with  the  relish  and  gratitude  with  which,  as 
it  is,  they  have  perhaps  accepted  your  testimony  against  us. 
....  They  would  have  felt  in  this  case  that  they  had  the  same 
right  to  be  shocked  at  you  as  you  have  to  be  shocked  at  us  ; 
and  further,  which  is  the  point  to  which  I  am  coming,  they 
would  have  said,  that,  granting  some  of  our  modern  writers  go 
beyond  the  Fathers  in  this  matter,  still  the  line  cannot  be  logic- 
ally drawn  between  the  teaching  of  the  Fathers  concerning  the 
Blessed  Virgin  and  our  own.  This  view  of  the  matter  seems 
to  me  true  and  important ;  I  do  not  think  the  line  can  be  satis- 
factorily drawn."  And  again  he  urges  on  Pusey :  "  As  you 
revere  the  Fathers,  so  you  revere  the  Greek  Church ;  and  here 
again  we  have  a  witness  on  our  behalf,  of  which  you  mvst  he 
aware  as  fully  as  we  are,  and  of  which  you  really  must  intend 
to  give  us  the  benefit.  In  proportion  as  the  Greek  ritual  is 
known  to  the  religious  public,  that  knowledge  will  take  off  the 
edge  of  the  surprise  of  Anglicans  at  the  sight  of  our  devotions 
to  our  Lady.  It  must  weigh  with  them,  when  they  discover 
that  we  can  enlist  on  our  side  in  this  controversy  those '  Seventy 
Millions '  of  Orientals,  who  are  separated  from  our  commun- 
ion. Is  it  not  a  very  pregnant  fact,  that  the  Eastern  churches, 
so  independent   of   us,  so  long    separated  from  the   "West, 


242  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

so  jealous  for  Antiquity,  should  even  surpass  us  in  their 
exaltation  of  the  Blessed  Virgin?"  Once  more  he  point- 
edly puts  it  to  Pusey :  "  The  height  of  our  offending 
in  our  devotion  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  would  not  look- 
so  great  in  your  Volume  as  it  does,  had  you  not  deUherately 
placed  yourself  on  lower  ground  than  your  own  feelings  to- 
wards her  would  have  spontaneously  prompted  you  to  take.  I 
have  no  doubt  you  had  some  good  reason  for  adopting  this 
course,  but  I  do  not  know  it ;  what  I  do  know  is,  that,  for  the 
Fathers'  sake  who  so  exalt  her,  you  really  do  love  and  venerate 
her,  though  you  do  not  evidence  it  in  your  hook.  I  am  glad 
then  in  this  place  to  insist  on  a  fact  which  will  lead  those 
among  us,  who  know  you  not,  to  love  you  from  their  love  of 
her,  in  spite  of  what  you  refuse  to  give  her ;  and  lead  Angli- 
cans, on  the  other  hand,  who  do  know  you,  to  think  better  of 
us,  who  refuse  her  nothing,  when  they  reflect  that,  if  you  come 
short  of  us,  you  do  not  actually  go  against  us  in  your  devotion 
to  her."  This  is  surely  inimitable !  The  calm  gentleness  of 
the  language  in  the  above  extracts  did  certainly  not  conceal 
from  Pusey  the  gravity  and  severity  of  the  rebuke  adminis- 
tered, and  it  "  drew  "  him. 

The  second  volume  of  the  Eirenicon  is  the  reply  to  Father 
Newman  on  our  topic.  The  third  volume  is  also  addressed  to 
him,  but  its  subject  is  foreign  to  this  discussion.  I  am  to  con- 
sider the  second.  What  an  improvement  on  the  original  Eiren- 
icon !  It  scarcely  appears  to  bo  the  work  of  the  same  author :  for, 
(1)  it  contains  not  one  ward  throughout  calculated  to  give  Cath- 
olics unnecessary  pain,  and  (2)  it  speaks  strongly  on  the  great- 
ness of  our  Blessed  Lady,  and  on  the  veneration  with  which 
Christians  should  regard  her.  The  very  title-page  mentions 
"the  reverential  love  due  to  the  ever-blessed  Theotokos" — 
JMother  of  God.  No  wonder  the  Vicar  did  not  refer  to  it  in 
his  last  "  Sti'icture."  It  was  probably  a  revelation  to  him,  and 
I  have  no  doubt  he  took  courage  from  it  to  deliver  his  "  Ser- 
mon "  so-called,  of  which,  else,  his  hearers  had  been  deprived. 
He  catinot  take  Littledale  and  repeat  the  "  Sermon."  Not  one 
irhn  listened,  to  it  ever  before  heard  its  like  in  any  Anglican 
ch  urch  in  this  city. 


A  Rejdinder.  243 

Pusey  begins  his  volume  by  admitting  the  truth  of  Fatlier 
Newman's  rebuke  that  he  "  deliberately "  suppressed  the  ex- 
pression of  his  own  feelings  towards  Mary.  These  are  his 
words:  "My  omission  of  any  positive  statements,  in  regard  to 
the  greatness  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  was  partly  owing,  I  sup- 
pose, to  my  not  even  imagining  that  any  one  could  doubt  my 
belief,  since  the  doctrine  expressed  by  that  great  title  Theotokoa 
(Mother  of  God),  is  a  matter  of  faith,  an  essential  part  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation^  I  will  now  let  Pusey  fur- 
nish evidence  of  the  truth  of  Dr.  Newman's  assertion  that  he 
was  the  last  man  who  had  a  right  to  accuse  Catholics  of  extrav- 
agant language  towards  Mary.  He  says :  "  (God),  in  all  eter- 
nity, we  both  believe,  foreordained  her  who  was  to  be  Theotokos, 
Genetrix  Dei,  the  Mother  of  God.  He,  in  time,  created  her ; 
He  endowed  her  with  all  those  qualities,  with  which  it  was 
fitting  that  she  should  be  endowed,  in  whom,  '  When  Thou 
tookest  upon  thee  to  deliver  man.  Thou  didst  not  abhor  the 
Virgin's  womb.'  It  was  indeed,  in  my  young  days,  a  startling 
thought,  when  it  first  flashed  upon  me  that  it  must  be  true,  that 
one  of  our  nature  which  is  the  last  and  lowest  of  God's  rational 
creation,  was  raised  toanearnessto  Almighty  God  above  all  the 
choirs  of  Angels  or  Archangels,  Dominions  or  Powers,  above  the 
Cherubim,  who  seem  so  near  to  God,  or  the  Seraphim  with 
their  burning  love,  close  to  His  throne.  Yet  it  was  self-evi- 
dent, as  soon  as  stated,  that  she,  of  whom  He  deigned  to  take 
His  Human  Flesh,  was  brought  to  a  nearness  to  Plimself,  above 
'  all  created  beings ;  that  she  stood  single  and  alone,  in  all  crea- 
tion or  all  possible  creations,  in  that,  in  her  womb.  He  Who,  in 
His  Godhead,  is  CoTisubstantial  with  the  Father,  deigned,  as  to 
His  Human  Body,  to  become  Consubstantial  with  her."  Let 
your  readers  take  in  the  sublimity  of  thought  suggested  by 
this  quotation  while  I  remark  upon  it.  When  Pusey  was  twenty- 
four  years  old  he  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  Oriel  College,  Ox- 
ford, along  with  Newman ;  at  twenty-eight  he  was  Canon  of 
Christ  Church  and  Royal  Professor  of  Hebrew.  How  won- 
derful are  the  ways  of  God !  Does  the  Vicar  know  the  history 
of  the  foundation  of  Oriel  ?  Perhaps  he  does,  since  he  had  the 
misfortune  to  proclaim  Oxford  his  Alma  2fatcr.   Then  he  will 


244  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

recognize  the  truth  of  my  statement  that :  but  for  the  place 
long  held  by  the  Blessed  Virgin  in  the  mind  and  heart  of  man, 
Pusey  could  not  have  been  a  Fellow  of  Oriel,  for  Oriel  would 
never  have  existed;  neither  would  he  have  been  Canon  of 
Christ  Church  nor  Professor  of  Hebrew — neither  would  we 
have  the  Eirenicon,  much  less  the  Vicar's  "  Sermon,"  though 
he  doubtless  considers  this  equivalent  to  the  honor  meant  for 
Mary  by  the  men  who  founded  Oriel  College.  Pusey  confesses 
it  was  "  a  startling  thought "  when  the  idea  of  Mary's  greatness 
"first  flashed  upon"  him.  The  heart  sickens  at  the  thoughts 
called  up  by  these  words.  A  Catholic  child  lisps  in  the  Arch- 
angelic  salutation  to  Mary — "  Hail,  full  of  grace,  the  Lord  is 
with  thee :  blessed  art  thou  among  women,"  and  the  seal  of 
the  Incarnation  is  pressed  upon  his  lips  with  his  mother's  milk ; 
and  to-day  when  the  cathedral  bell  strikes  the  hours,  Catholic 
hearts  ring  out  in  full  diapason,  in  that  same  Angehis,  their 
gratitude  to  God  for  the  benefits  of  the  Incarnation.  But  here 
we  have  a  Fellow  of  Mary's  College,  a  Canon  of  Christ  Church, 
a  Royal  Professor  of  Hebrew,  proclaiming  to  the  world  that 
before  he  entered  his  young  manhood  no  Ave  had  ever  been 
uttered  by  his  voice  to  salute  the  Queen  of  Heaven — no  earthly 
mother  had  ever  taught  his  lisping  lips  to  sing  that  song  of  the 
Innocents,  "  O  Mary,  how  sweet  is  thy  name ! "  It  was  not, 
however,  the  fault  of  Pusey's  pure  heart,  and  in  the  maturity 
of  his  great  intellect,  he  tried  to  atone  for  his  neglect.  But 
how  could  it  be  otherwise  in  the  Anglican  Church  a  few  years 
ago  ?  It  was  not  from  the  impure  crew  who  founded  the  sect, 
with  which  he  outwardly  allied  himself,  that  he  could  learn  j, 
anything  of  her  whom  he  now  places  so  high.  Semirarais  or 
Cleopatra,  Anne  Boleyn  or  Queen  Elizabeth  filled  a  larger  place 
in  their  thoughts  than  the  Blessed  Mother  of  God.  How  is  it 
to-day  among  the  rising  generation  in  this  city  ?  Is  that  Blessed 
One  anything  more  than  a  name  ? 


A  Eejoixdeb.  245 

LETTER  XX. 

IPSE,   IPSA,   IPSUM — A  EEJOINDEB. 

To  the  Editor  of  tJie  Ghhe : 

,     Sib, — I  continue  my  observations  on  the  Eirenicon — second 
volume. 

Pusey  follows  up  the  quotation  on  which  I  commented  at  the 
close  of  my  last  letter  with  tliis  extract  from  a  sermon  of  St. 
Proclus,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  A.D.  447 : 

"  Traverse  in  thought,  O  man,  the  creation,  and  see  if  there 
is  anything  equal  to  or  greater  than  the  Holy  Virgin,  who  bare 
God.  Compass  the  earth,  survey  the  sea,  search  the  air,  track 
the  heavens  in  thought ;  consider  all  the  invisible  powers,  and 
see  whether  there  is  any  other  such  marvel  in  all  creation.  For 
the  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God ;  the  Angels  serve  with 
fear ;  the  Archangels  worship  with  trembling ;  the  Cherubim, 
not  sustaining,  quiver ;  the  Seraphim,  flying  around,  approach 
not,  and  trembling,  cry,  'Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  Lord  of  hosts; 
heaven  and  earth  are  full  of  His  praise.'  The  clouds  in  awe  be- 
came the  chariot  of  the  Resurrection  ;  Hell  in  fear  cast  forth 
the  dead ; — count  over  the  miracles,  and  admire  the  victory  of 
the  Virgin  ;  for  whom  all  creation  hymned  with  fear  and  trem- 
bling, she  alone  inexplicably  housed.  Blessed  for  her  sake  are 
all  women.    For  womankind  is  no  longer  v/nder  a  curse  /  for 

,  the  race  has  received  That  wherefrom  it  shall  surpass  the  Angels 
in  glory.     Eve  is  healed,"  etc. 

Those  words  remind  one  of  the  beautiful  saying  of  the  saintly 
Father  Faber,  from  whom  Pusey  gratefully  confesses  he  learned 
much  :  "  There  are  cold,  shallow  controversies  on  earth,  about 
our  Lady's  greatness,  while  at  this  hour  the  great  St.  Michael 
is  gazing  on  her  throne  with  a  rapture  of  astonishment,  a  de- 
lighted rapture  which  will  grow  to  all  eternity."  But  this  is 
simply  another  way  of  putting  Pusey'sown  words  already 
given,  and  which  are,  in  their  turn,  those  of  St.  Proclus.  Now, 
not  only  does  Pusey  heartily  adopt  and  fully  endorse  the  lan- 
guage of  St.  Proclus,  but  he  proceeds  to  quote,  in  order  to  con- 


246  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

cur  in  them,  the  glowing  panegyrics  of  St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria, 
Hesycliius  of  Jerusalem,  Tiieodotus  and  St.  Basil.  That  is  to 
say,  he  accepts  as  tnie  and  fitting  to  Mary  everij  word  in  that 
magnificent  panorama  from  the  Greek  Fathers-,  which  I  passed 
before  the  eyes  of  your  readers  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  Letters  of 
this  Rejoinder.  And,  he  makes  tliis  remark :  "  Doubtless,  any 
imayinations  of  ours  must  come  short  of  the  truth,  if  we 
would  picture  to  ourselves  the  superhmnan,  engraced  beauty  of 
the  soul  of  her  whom  God  vouchsafed  to  create,  so  alone  in 
His  whole  creation,  whose  being  ever  lay  in  His  eternal  coun- 
sels, who  must  have  been  in  His  Divine  Mind,  when,  in  all 
eternity.  He  contemplated  the  way  in  which  He  should  unite 
His  rational  creation  to  Himself,  redeeming  His  fallen  race  ; 
from  whom  He,  who  should  be  God  and  Man,  was  to  derive 
His  Human  Flesh,  and  in  His  Sacred  Childhood  be  subject  to 
her." 

Again  :  Pusey  seemed  to  imply  that  Mary  had  no  other  part 
or  position  in  the  Incarnation  than  as  its  mere  physical  instru- 
ment— much  the  same  part,  as  it  were,  that  Judah  or  David 
may  have  had.  Father  Newman  points  out  to  him  that  the 
Fathers,  on  the  contrary,  from  the  very  first,  speak  of  her  "  as 
an  intelligent,  responsible  cause  of  our  Lord's  taking  flesh  ''; 
"  her  faith  and  obedience  being  accessories  to  the  Incarnation, 
and  gaining  it  as  her  reward."  And  Father  Xewman  con- 
tinues :  "  They  (the  Fathers)  declare  that  she  co-operated  in 
our  salvation,  not  merely  by  the  descent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
upon  her  body,  but  by  specific  holy  acts,  the  effect  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  upon  her  soul ;  that,  as  Eve  forfeited  privileges  by  sin, 
so  Mary  earned  privileges  by  the  fruits  of  grace;  that  as  Eve 
was  a  cause  of  ruin  to  all,  Mary  was  a  cause  of  salvation  to  all ; 
that,  as  Eve  made  room  for  Adam's  fall,  so  Mary  made  room 
for  our  Lord's  reparation  of  it ;  and  thus,  whereas  the  free  gift 
was  not  as  the  offence,  but  much  greater,  it  follows  that,  as  Eve 
co-operated  in  effecting  a  great  evil,  Mary  co-operated  in  effect- 
ing a  much  greater  good."  Pusey  transfers  these  words  to  his 
own  pages  in  the  Eirenicon  and  accepts  their  truth  absolutely. 
"  Your  words,^''  he  says  to  Father  Newman,  ''  express  my  helief 
alsoJ'^    Here,  then,  I  will  partially  anticipate  the  subject  set 


A  Eejoindek.  247 

off  for  my  next  letter.  Pusey  had  objected,  in  the  first  vol- 
nme  of  tlie  Eirenicon,  to  the  title  "  Co-Iiedcniptress"  as  applied 
to  Mary.  He  did  so,  honestly  I  assume,  because  he  had  no  ade- 
(juate  sense  of  what  it  implies,  and  supposing  it  to  mean  more 
than  it  does  mean  in  the  mouth  of  a  Catholic.  When  his  dif- 
ficulty is  removed  by  Father  Newman's  appeal  to  the  Fathers, 
and  to  their  explanation  of  the  ways  by  which  Mary  ^^co-oper- 
ated in  our  salvation,^''  he  says  so  like  an  honest  man,  and  as- 
sures Father  Newman  that  his  words  express  his  belief  also, 
and,  therefore,  that  Mary  is  justly  styled — "  Co-Redemptress." 
Let  me  for  the  instruction  of  thoughtful  Protestants,  who  do 
not  claim  to  be  "  true  Catholics,"  enlarge  on  this.  Their  one 
obvious  objection  to  the  Catholic  phrase,  "  Co-Redemptress," 
would  be,  that  it  denies  the  otiHce  of  our  dear  Lord  as  Sole 
Redeemer.  But  this  difiiculty  arises  from  their  forgetting  that 
there  are  two  different  kinds  of  co-operation  ;  and  that  where 
the  co-operation  takes  place  by  counsel,  by  instigation,  by  inter- 
cession, or  by  a  consent  without  which  the  work  could  not  he 
accomplished,  the  work  still  remains  exclusively  performed  by 
its  immediate  agent.  Thus  it  was  Adam's  sin  which  exclu- 
sively wrought  man's  fall ;  and  yet  Eve  actively  co-operated  in 
that  fall,  because  she  incited  Adam  to  do  that  which  exclusively 
caused  it.  Moreover  Eve's  co-operation  was  formal  and  not 
merely  material,  because  she  knew  she  was  exciting  him  to 
what  involved  man's  ruin.  In  a  parallel  manner,  Christ,  our 
Redeemer,  alone  wrought  man's  whole  Redemption ;  and  yet 
Mary  as  truly  and  as  formally  co-operated  in  man's  redemption, 
as  Eve  in  man's  fall.  She  co-operated,  of  course,  in  one  sense 
by  the  circumstance  of  becoming  His  Mother.  But,  if  this 
were  all,  it  could  not  be  said  that  she  is  the  Co-operatrix  of  Re- 
demption or  Co-Redemptress,  except  in  a  purely  material  sense. 
At  the  solemn  moment  of  the  Annunciation,  man's  redemp- 
tion depended  on  the  alternative,  whether  she  would  or  would 
not  give  her  consent.  And  the  consent  which  she  gave  was 
not  merely  to  the  being  Mother  of  God — that  would  have  been 
simply  an  unparalleled  exaltation  and  dignity — but  she  con- 
sented to  His  work  of  redemption.  She  consented  to  undergo 
all  that  unspeakable  suffering  and  anguish,  which  were  involved 


248  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

in  lier  Son  dying  for  the  sins  of  the  world.  As  Eve  then 
formally  co-operated  in  the  fall,  so  Mary  formally  co-operated 
in  the  Kedemptiou,  and  therefore,  no  one,  whose  faith  on  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation — the  basilar  idea  of  Christianity — 
is  sound,  can  hesitate  to  call  her,  in  the  Catholic  sense,  "  Co- 
Redemptress." 

When  it  is  said,  however,  that  man's  Redemption  depended 
on  Mary's  consent,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  this  involved 
no  jeopardizing  of  God's  work ;  because  by  His  infallible  grace 
He  secured  her  consent  without  in  any  way  violating  her  per- 
fect liberty  of  will.  Pusey  says  to  Father  Newman  on  this 
point:  ^\God\in  all  eternity,  we  both  helieve,  foreordained 
her  who  was  to  he  Theotokos,  Genetrix  Dei,  the  Mother  of 
GodP  So,  too,  it  must  not  be  forgotten,  that  the  Co-Redemp- 
tress  was  herself  redeemed ;  and,  I  could  illustrate  the  perfect 
harmony  of  these  two  facts  by  a  very  striking  parallel  between 
Eve's  relation  to  Adam  and  Mary's  to  Jesus.  Moreover,  she 
was  redeemed  with  a  higher  redemption  than  any  other  crea- 
ture— a  redemption  oi preservation,  and  not  of  deliverance^  for 
she  was  redeemed  by  her  Son's  foreseen  death.  To  this  I  will 
refer  later.  So  much  have  I  felt  obliged  to  say  in  justification 
of  Mary's  title,  "  Co-Redemptress."  I  have  little  fear  of  any 
reasoning  on  Christian  principles,  that  would  attempt  to  de- 
prive her  of  it. 

At  present  I  am  in  an  atmosphere  of  thought,  which  uxor  ■ 
tion  of  the  Yicar's  name  cannot  but  cloud  and  sully,  and  I 
protest  against  tlie  necessity  of  using  it,  for  I  feel  it  little  short 
of  a  degradation.  In  the  confused  mass  of  citations  which  he 
takes  from  Pusey 's^rs^  volume  for  his  last  "  Stricture"  he  in- 
cludes— "  Co-Redemptress."  So  far  he  exhibits  himself  as  a 
mere  parasite  to  Pusey.  Why  did  he  not  read  in  Pusey's 
second  volume,  Father  Newman's  explanation  from  the  Fathers 
of  the  title  "Co-Redemptress,"  which  Pusey  himself  so 
heartily  accepted?  Well,  I  believe  he  did  read  it;  but  I  will 
give  him  the  benefit  of  the  milder  alternative  when  I  say  that 
not  malice,  but  pure  ignorance  of  the  matters  he  has  under- 
taken to  discuss,  prevented  his  understanding  it.  That  this  is 
his  mental  condition  your  readers  are  long  since  convinced. 


A  Rejoinder.  219 

Why  should  not  a  Catholic  feel  it  degrading,  even  under  the 
pressure  of  duty  and  "  priestly  vows,"  to  magnify  such  as  he 
by  noticing  him  at  all  ?  Why  should  so  respectable  a  weapon 
as  the  "  shillalah  "  be  put  to  such  ignominious  uses  ? 

Again.     Pusey  oxpressed  his  fears  that  there  might  be  a 
difficulty  in  his  adopting  the  great  titles  given  by  the  Fathers 

'  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  because  he  had  an  "impression,"  he  says, 
that  their  meaning  was  changed.  This  makes  a  Catholic  smile. 
'•  I  am  not  accusing,"  he  assures  Father  Newman,  "  I  only  say, 
from  what  we  wish  to  be  exempt " — when  he  and  his  party 
became  Catholics.  Father  Newman  refers  him  to  one  of  our 
prayer-books — "The  Crown  of  Jesus," — from  which  Pusey 
very  fairly  makes  this  extract,  explaining  our  every-day  use  of 
the  "  great  titles"  given  by  the  Fathers  to  Mary :  '•''Mother  of 
Divine  Grace,  because  she  is  the  parent  of  Him  who  is  the 
Source  and  Author  of  all  grace ;  Seat  of  Wisdom,  as  being  re- 
plenished with  this  heavenly  virtue,  because  she  is  the  Mother 
of  Him  who  is  wisdom  itself ;  Cause  of  our  Joxj,  as  being  the 
instrument  of  that  great  blessing,  which  is  the  source  of  all  our 
Christian  consolations ;  Tower  of  Ivm^y,  as  being  remarkable 
for  the  purity  of  innocence :  ivory,  by  its  whiteness,  being  the 
emblem  of  delicacy,  whence  that  saying  in  the  canticles,  '  Thy 
neck  is  as  a  tower  of  ivory ';  Arh  of  the  Covenant,  as  being  the 
parent  of  Him  who  is  the  Mediator  of  the  new  Covenant ; 
Gate  of  Heaven,  as  being,  again,  mother  of  Him  who  has  opened 
to  us  the  gate  of  everlasting  happiness;   Morning  Star,  as 

'  being  the  harbinger  of  that  bright  Day  which  has  brought  im- 
mortality to  light."  To  these  beautiful  titles  let  me  add  that 
other,  '■'■  Mater  MisericordicB  " — Mother  of  Meroy — because  she 
is  the  parent  of  Him  who  is  IVfercy  itself.  By  this  will  Mary 
now  be  honored  and  saluted  in  this  city  as  the  Patroness  of  the 
new  hospital  just  erected  by  the  zeal  of  our  venerated  Bishop. 
These  explanations  perfectly  satisfied  Pusey,  and  he  says  to 
Father  Newman:  "I  am  thankful  to  see  in  'The  Crown  of 
Jesus,'  to  which  you  referred  me,  expositions  of  the  great  titles 
which  are  concentrated  in  the  Litany  of  Loretto,  sttch  as  every 
Christian,  must  receive.''^  Here  again  the  Yicar  displays  "  the 
hoof  and  tail."    He  copies  Pusey's  objection,  says  not  a  word 


250  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

about  the  Catholic  explanatiou  and  Pusey's  satisfaction  with  it 
expressed  in  the  foregoing  words,  and  then  cliarges  "  the  Church 
of  Koine  with  bringing  in  such  a  confusion  of  terms  as  to 
make  it  next  to  iin  possible  for  true  Catholics  to  use  innocently 
even  the  phraseology  of  the  Catholic  Fathers."  My  God! 
What  a  confession  !  And  from  apostates  who  dare  lay  claim 
to  a  divine  commission  to  proclaim  Thy  truth  to  the  world ! 
Surely  they  have  their  reward  :  "&  then  hecause  thou  art  luke- 
xoarm^  and  neither  cold  nor  hot,  I  will  spue  thee  out  of  my 
mouth.''''*  The  Vicar  then  adds:  "In  the  same  way  (modern 
Romanists)  have  wrested  the  meaning  of  the  term  Advocate 
or  Comforter  in  S.  Irenaeus,  although  the  context  and  the 
general  teaching  of  his  writings  give  them  tJie  lie  direct.''^ 
Only  the  "  father  of  lies  "  could  have  inspired  an  utterance  so 
transparently  his  offspring.  Pusey  would  turn  in  his  grave  at 
the  very  thought  of  being  made  responsible  for  such  blas- 
phemies against  honesty  and  truth. 

To  return  to  the  Eirenicon.  Having  quoted  from  the 
Fathers,  whose  names  I  gave  a  moment  ago,  the  most  glowing 
language  in  exaltation  of  the  blessed  Mother  tliat  the  human 
mind  can  conceive  or  hutnan  tongue  utter,  Pusey  says :  "  Now, 
in  all  this,  I  suppose  that  there  is  nothing  which  any  Anglican 
who  reflected  on  the  term  '  Theotdkos '  (Mother  of  God),  would 
hesitate  about  (except  that  we  are  unaccustomed  to  m^'stical 

interpretations  of  Scripture) "      Yes ;  but  how  hard 

pressed  Pusey  would  be  to  find  "any  Anglican  who  reflected 
on  the  term  (Mother  of  God)''  and  applied  it  to  Mary  no  man 
could  be  more  painfully  aware  than  himself.  He  knew  but 
too  well  how  it  was  him  before,  as  he  confessed,  the  idea  of 
Mary's  greatness  "  first  flashed  upon  "  his  mind.  "  No  man," 
candidly  confesses  that  learned  Protestant  divine.  Dr.  Nevin — 
"  No  man  whose  tongue  falters  in  pronouncing  Mary  Mother 
of  God  can  be  orthodox  at  heart  on  the  article  of  Christ's 
person."  Dr.  Nevin  was  a  Presbyterian,  and  the  originator 
and  exponent  of  the  celebrated  "  Mercersburg  System  of  The- 
ology." Of  course  be  had  no  pretensions  to  being  a  "  true 
Catholic."  Now,  that  Mary  is  "  Theotokos,"  or  Mother  of  God, 
is  an  integral  part  of  the  Catholic  Faith  fixed  by  the  Third 


A  Rejoinder.  251 

General  Council  of  Epliesus,  A.D.  431.  The  Anglican  Bishop 
Burnet,  in  his  Exposition  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  speaking  of 
the  time  of  the  Council  of  Ephesus,  sjiys:  "The  whole  world 
was  then  filled  with  very  extravagant  devotion  to  her  (Mary)."' 
Art.  XXII.  "  Extravagant ! "  Ever  the  old  shibboleth  in  the 
mouth  of  Bishop  and  Vicar.  Nevertheless,  the  title  ''  Mother 
of  God,"  as  Cardinal  Newman  beautifully  writes,  "  carries  with 
it  no  admixture  of  rhetoric,  no  taint  of  extravagant  affection, 
— it  has  nothing  else  but  a  well-weighed,  grave,  dogmatic 
sense,  which  corresponds  and  is  adequate  to  its  sound.  It  in- 
tends to  express  that  God  is  her  son,  as  tmly  as  any  one  of  us 
is  the  son  of  his  own  mother.  If  this  be  so,  what  can  be  said 
of  any  creature  whatever  which  may  not  be  said  of  her?  What 
can  be  said  too  much,  so  that  it  does  not  compromise  the 
attributes  of  the  Creator?  It  is  this  awful  title,  which  both 
illustrates  and  connects  together  the  two  prerogatives  of  Mary, 
....  her  sanctity  and  her  greatness.  It  is  the  issue  of  her 
sanctity ;  it  is  the  origin  of  her  greatness.  What  dignity  can  be 
too  great  to  attribute  to  her  who  is  as  closely  bound  up,  as  in- 
timately one,  with  the  Eternal  Word,  as  a  mother  is  with  a 
son  ?  What  outfit  of  sanctity,  what  fullness  and  redundance 
of  grace,  what  exuberance  of  merits  must  have  been  hers, 
when  once  we  admit  the  supposition,  which  the  Fathers  justify, 
that  her  Maker  really  did  regard  those  merits,  and  take  them 
into  account,  when  He  condescended  'not  to  abhor  the 
Virgin's  womb'?  ....  Men  sometimes  wondei'  tliat  we 
call  her  Mother  of  Life,  of  Mer(nj,  of  Salvation',  what  are 
all  these  titles  compared  to  that  one  narne — Mother  of  God?  " 
The  Anglican  Book  of  Homilies  declares  that  the  Primitive 
Church  is  to  be  followed,  and  that  the  first  Four  General 
Councils  are  to  be  admitted  as  belonging  to  the  Primitive 
Church.  Pusey,  on  the  contrary,  says  {Eirenicon,  vol.  1,  p.  93): 
"The  Church  of  England  receives  the  Six  General  Councils." 
At  all  events  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  state  that  the  Book  of 
Homilies  contains  "  a  godly  and  wholesome  doctrine."  Thus 
in  theory,  at  least,  Anglicans  are  bound  to  admit  that  Mary  is 
Mother  of  God,  because  Ephesus,  the  TJilrd  General  Council, 
defined  it.    But  who  ever  heard  an  Anglican,  lay  or  clerical, 


252  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

60  speak  of  her  ?  I  never  did ;  and  I  can  confidently  affirm 
that  no  AngUcan  minister  in  this  city  ever  before  used  it.  We 
hear  it  for  the  first  time  from  the  Vicar,  taught  by  Pusey, 
who  says  that  "  those  other  great  teruis,"  of  the  Fathers,  •'  great 
aa  they  were,  were  but  weaker  expressions  of  that  one  word 
Theotokos  (Mother  of  God).  They  were  so  many  colors 
evolved  out  of  that  central  light."  Here  again  he  agrees  with 
Father  Newman. 

I  cannot  better  illustrate  the  truth  of  what  I  have  said  on 
this  topic,  than  by  transferring  to  your  columns  a  correspond- 
ence between  the  new  Bishop  of  Nova  Scotia,  the  Rev. 
James  Simpson,  a  llitualist,  and  one  Mr.  Hall,  evidently  a 
genuine  Anglican,  in  England.  The  comedy  opens  with  a 
letter  from  Mr.  Simpson  to  Bishop  Courtenay,  as  follows : 

Halifax,  April  27th,  1888. 
To  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Nova  Scotia: 

My  Lord,— At  the  execution  of  William  Millman,  in  the  Char- 
lottetown  jail,  on  the  10th  inst.,  I  said  the  following  committal  : 

"The  Glorious  Cross  and  Passion  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and 
the  mighty  intercessions  of  the  Mother  of  God  and  all  the 
Saints,  be  between  thee  and  thy  ghostly  enemies  at  this  the  hour  of 
thy  departure,  and  the  blessing  of  God, "  etc. ,  etc. 

In  consequence  of  this  I  have  been  charged  with  invoking  the 
Virgin  Mary,  and  making  requests  to  her,  thereby  acting  disloyally 
to  the  Church  of  England.  I  beg  therefore  to  lay  the  matter  before 
your  Lordship,  requesting  that  I  may  be  allowed  to  publish  this 
letter  and  your  reply. 

Believe  me,  your  Lordship's  obedient  servant, 

(Signed),  Jajies  Simpson. 

Your  readers  will  notice  that  the  "  committal "  used  by 
Mr.  Simpson  is,  almost  verbatim,  the  prayer  used  by  Catholics 
at  the  bedside  of  a  departing  soul,  invoking  in  its  behalf  the 
intercession  of  the  Blessed  Yirgin  and  the  Saints.  Bishop 
Courtenay  replied  as  follows : 

Halifax,  30th  April,  1888. 
My  Dear  Sir, — The  words  which  you  quote  in  your  note  of  the 
27th  inst.  are  not  an  invocation  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  and 
therefore  in  using  them  you  have  not  laid  yourself  open  to  the 


A  Kejoindur.  253 

charge,  which  you  say  has  been  brotight  against  you,  of  acting  dis- 
loyally to  the  Church  of  England.  The  chuixih  has  not,  so  far  as  I 
am  aware,  asserted  or  taught  that  the  children  of  God  in  the  invisible 
world  cease  to  pray  for  those  on  earth,  or  that  such  prayei-s  are  less 
efficacious  than  those  wliich  we  offer  for  one  another,  and,  tlierefoi-e, 
the  pious  desire  and  aspiration  that  the  whole  of  such  prayers  might 
be  an  aid  to  a  criminal  at  the  point  of  death  for  the  defeating  of  his 
spiritual  foes  is  not  other  than  right  and  fitting.  The  one  thing 
which,  in  my  judgment,  is  liable  to  misconception,  on  the  part  of 
hasty  and  ignorant  persons,  is  the  special  me;ition  of  the  "interces- 
sions of  the  Mother  of  God,"  which,  to  such  people,  might  seem  to 
imply  an  assumption  of  the  mediatorship  of  our  Blessed  Lord,  and 
an  infringement  of  His  right  ' '  who  ever  loveth  to  make  interces- 
sion for  us."  "While,  therefore,  I  do  not  think  you  justly  open 
to  blame  for  the  use  of  such  a  phrase,  I  would,  if  I  were  you, 
avoid  it  on  any  other  occasion,  as  being  likely  to  cause  you  to  be 
misunderstood  and  wrongfully  accused. 

(Sig.)  F.  Nova  Scotia. 

Is  not  this  appalling !  Is  it,  or  not,  apostasy  ?  The  Bishop 
declares  it  to  be  "  right  and  fitting "  hy  "  pious  desire  and 
aspiration  "  to  ask  the  " prayers"  of  "the  Mother  of  God  and 
all  the  saints,"  "at  the  point  of  death,  for  the  defeating  of 
spiritual  foes."  Only  "  hasty  and  ignoi'ant  persons  "  can  ob- 
ject to  it,  he  assures  Mr.  Simpson.  Again  :  it  does  not  matter 
so  much  about  the  other  "  saints,"  but  "  the  special  mention  of 
the  intercession  of  the  Mother  of  God"  is  peculiarly  odious  to 
those  "hasty  and  ignorant  persons"  and  detested  by  them. 
Since,  then,  to  "  such  people  "  the  asking  for  Mary's  intercession 
"  might  seem  to  imply  an  assumption  of  the  mediatorship  of 
our  Blessed  Lord,"  what  does  the  Bishop  counsel  Mr.  Simp- 
son ?  Does  he,  like  St.  Paul,  urge  him  to  declare  boldly  God's 
truth,  "  in  season,  out  of  season,"  to  instruct  those  "hasty 
and  ignorant  persons,"  "  to  exhort  in  sound  doctrine  and  con- 
vince the  gainsayers,"  to  "  rebuke  them  sharply  that  they  may 
be  sound  in  the  faith  "  ?  Not  at  all ;  he  advises  him  to  surren- 
der and  thus  make  life  more  pleasant  for  himself.  Mr.  Simp- 
son must  not  "  on  any  other  occasion  "  "  mention  the  interces- 
sion of  the  Mother  of  God  "  1 


254:  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Again  Bishop  Courtenay  says :  "  The  church  has  not,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  asserted  or  taught  that  the  children  of  God  in 
the  invisible  world  cease  to  pray  for  those  on  earth,  or  that 
such  prayers  are  less  eflScacious  than  those  which  we  oflfer  for 
one  another."  Has  the  bishop  ever  read  the  '*  Homilies  of  the 
Church  of  England,"  the  authoritative  exposition  of  Anglican 
doctrine  %  In  the  "  Second  Part  of  the  Sermon  concej-ning 
Prayer,"  the  invocation  of  the  saints  is  most  distinctly pi'ohih- 
ited^  on  the  express  ground  that  the  saints  are  "  not  able  to  help 
Ufi,'"  and  the  mere  "  desiring  help  at  their  hands"  is  represented 
as  a  treason  against  the  majesty  of  Heaven.  "Yet  thon  wilt 
object  there  that  the  saints  in  Heaven  do  pray  for  us,  and  that 
their  prayer  proceedeth  of  an  earnest  charity  that  they  have 
towards  their  brethren  on  earth.  "Whereto  it  may  be  well  an- 
swered, first,  that  no  man  knoweth  whether  they  do  pray  for  us 
or  no."  Jlomilu's,  \>\>.  290-301.  Ed.  Oaford  University  Press. 

Last  summer  Bishop  Courtenay  went  to  England  to  attend 
the  Lambeth  Conference.  While  there  an  Anglican  layman, 
Mr.  Hall,  brought  him  to  task  for  his  letter  to  Mr.  Simpson 
endorsing  his  "Committal "  prayer.  The  correspondence  is  so 
germane  to  my  topic  that  I  need  not  apologize  for  incorporat- 
ing it  here.     The  bishop  replied  to  Mr.  Hall  as  follows : 

Lambeth  Palace,  27th  July,  1888. 

My  Dear  Sir, — The  whole  coutrovei-sy  turns  upon  tlie  interpre- 
tation of  the  words  you  complain  of.  You  assert  that  they  consti- 
tute an  invocation  of  "  the  Blessed  Virgin."  I  as.sert  that  they  do 
not.  I  acquit  Mr.  Simpson  on  that  ground  alone.  I  am  as  well 
aware  as  you  can  be  that  our  Church  of  England  has  in  her  articles 
condenmed  "invocation  of  saints,"  and  as  one  of  her  officers  I  am 
ready  to  condemn  such  a  thing  too,  but  I  cannot  consent  that  you 
or  any  other  member  of  the  church  should  deternune  that  certain 
words  are  what  I  contend  they  are  not,  and  call  in  question  my 
judgment  as  if  the  office  of  judge  belonged  to  them  and  not  to  me. 
As  to  the  term  "Mother  of  God,"  you  are  aware,  I  suppose,  tliat  it 
is  generally  understood  to  be  the  equivalent  of  the  Greek  term  ' '  TJieo- 
tokos,"  which  was  approved  by  a  general  council  as  "Orthodox" 
and  to  he  used  against  heresy.  This  is  the  only  sense  in  which  it 
is  allowed  by  any  Bishop  of  our  church  to  he  made  use  of  hy  the 
clergy.    I  am  quite  willing  to  be  "  the  wrong  man  in  the  wrong 


A  Rejoi>'dkr.  255 

place"  according  to  your  wisdom,  but  tlien  you  see  it  is  not  to  you 
that  sucli  judt^meut  belongs,  and  I  would  advise  you  very  earnestly 
to  obtain  sufficient  knowledge  of  "  tlieological  terms, "before  you 
undertake  to  decide  what  is  or  is  not  false  teaching  according  to  tlie 
Church  of  England. 

I  remain  yours  truly, 

(Sig.)  F.  Nova  Scotia. 

Twice  in  tlie  Vicar's  sermon  lie  speaks  of  Mary  as  tlie 
"  Holy  Virgin  Mother  of  God  "  and  the  "  Blessed  Mother  of 
God,"  and  again  he  calls  her  "  the  holy  Theotokos."  Was  he 
only  preaching  against  my  "  heresy  "  on  the  Incarnation  ?  It 
was  not  any  love  for  the  Blessed  Virgin,  after  all,  that  begat 
that  "  Sermon,"  since  Bishop  Courtenay  says  that  he  would 
not  be  allowed  to  speak  of  the  "  Mother  of  God "  except 
''agaiiist  heresy."  How  ca7i  he  forgive  the  Bishop  for  expos- 
ing the  false  pretence,  the  "  controversial  trick,"  by  which  he 
sought  to  impose  on  your  readers  ? 

Mr.  Hall's  rejoinder  to  the  Bishop's  letter  is  as  follows : 

AiNTREE,  July  30th,  1888. 
My  Lord, — Tlie  whole  controversy  does  not  turn  on  whether  the 
Rev.  J.  Simpson's  words  to  the  dying  criniinal,  viz. — "the  mighty 
intercession  of  tlie  Mother  of  God  and  all  the  Saints  be  between 
thee  and  thy  ghostly  foes,"  are  an  invocation  of  Saints,  but  rather 
whether  our  Church  teaches  any  "  Mother  of  God  "  or  any  such  in- 
tercession. You  say,  "  I  am  not  aware  that  our  Church  teaches 
that  the  Saints  in  heaven  do  not  intei-cede  for  those  on  earth."  My 
Lord,  is  not  tliis  mere  trifling?  You  know  that  the  question  is  not 
what  our  Church  does  not  teach,  but  what  she  does.  If  she  does, 
why  denounce  its  invocation  as  "  a  vain  invention  "?  Wliy  did  she 
remove  the  "  Mother  of  God  "  and  every  word  about  such  interces- 
sion from  our  Prayer  Book  ?  My  Lord,  wliat  can  you  know  of  an  in- 
tercession of  wliich  our  Prayer  Book  is  wliolly  silent,  and  of  which 
God  Himself  in  His  whole  revelation  says  not  one  word?  Is  it  on 
such  grounds  that  you  rush  in  and  dare  to  dogmatize?  Your  Lord- 
ship denies  that  Mr.  Simpson's  words  arc  an  invocation  of  Saints. 
Yet  liis  words  being  an  undoubted  prayer,  they  are  cither  an  invo- 
cation to  the  "  Mother  of  God  "  or  (the  greater  absurdity)  of  invok- 
ing God  to  invoke  the  Saints'  intercession.  This  distinction  is  so 
fine  that  it  reaches  the  dignity  of  a  quibble.  It  needs  no  Episcopal 
Judge,  but  only  a  little  'common  sense,  to  see  that  the  Rev.  gentle- 


256  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

man  appeals  to  this  mighty  intercession — was  teaching  the  poor 
soul  to  invoke  it.  My  Lord,  you  tell  us  as  any  Komanist  would 
that  the  term  "  Mother  of  God  "  is  orthodox  because  it  is  the  English 
equivalent  of  the  Greek  word  "Theotokos,"  which  word  was  sanc- 
tioned by  a  General  Council.  What,  I  ask,  has  your  Lordship  to 
do  with  General  Councils,  of  which  our  Church  says,  Twenty-first 
Article:  "Wherefore  things  ordained  of  them  (General  Councils) 
have  neither  strength  nor  authority  unless  they  be  taken  out  of 
Scripture."  Still  less  the  packed  Council  of  Ephesus  which  illegally 
and  violently  banished  the  Bishop  of  Constantinople  because  he 
would  have  none  of  this  very  woi-d  "Theotokos."  My  Lord,  can 
you  find  any  "Theotokos"  in  the  Greek  Testament?  Did  any 
Apostle  ever  write  it?  Can  you  show  its  English  equivalent  any- 
Avhere  except  in  the  Romish  Breviary?  My  Lord,  you  tell  me  that 
no  Bishop  permits  the  use  of  this  term  "Mother  of  God"  except 
against  heresy.  Did  Mr.  Simpson  use  it  against  heresy?  Yet  you 
wrote  to  him — "  that  only  the  ignorant  object  to  it,"  and  you  hold 
him  "  blameless."  Which  am  I  to  believe?  Can  both  be  true?  Is 
it  even  true  that  only  the  ignorant  object?  I  may  not  be  a  master 
of  the  theological  terms  to  which  you  refer,  but  I  do  undei-stand 
plain  English  and  can  generally  distinguish  the  real  from  the  sham. 
On  every  side  the  laity  see  Bishops  and  clergy  first  foisting  upon  us 
(on  false  pretences)  the  teaching  of  Rome,  next  shamelessly  avow- 
ing the  fact.  My  Lord,  depend  upon  it  a  day  of  reckoning  must 
come  between  this  outraged  laity  and  these  dishonest  and  law-break- 
ing Bishops  and  clergy. 

I  am,  my  Lord, 

Yours  respectfully, 
(Signed),  M.  Hall. 

Here  ends  the  play.  Who  would  not  pity  the  Bishop  ?  "  Two 
chief  reasons,"  the  Vicar  says,  "  have  tended  to  keep  Roman- 
ism in  England  from  displaying  its  true  colors,"  and  the  prin- 
cipal one  he  assigns  is  "  the  healthful  influence  of  English 
church  atmosphere  with  its  solid  theokxjy  and  devotions^ 
Ha !  Ila ! !  Ha  I ! !  Your  readers  cannot  get  a  better  sample  of 
both  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  foregoing  correspondence.  Mr. 
Simpson's  "devotions,"  his  "pious  desires  and  aspirations"  in 
aid  of  the  dying  are  "nipped  in  the  bud"  by  the  Bishop, 
whose  "  solid  tJicology  "  is,  in  turn,  simply  dispersed  by  a  lay- 
man of  his  own  communion.  Such  an  exhibition,  one  might 
suppose,  ought  to  prevent  a  man,  who  dares  to  think  at  all, 


A  Rejoinder.  257 

from  remaining  an  Anglican  for  twenty-fonr  hours.  A  private 
in  the  Salvation  Army  ranks  is  far  more  respectable  from  a 
logical  standpoint.  As  for  Ritualism — well,  as  Carlyle  says, 
"  it  is  a  matter  to  strike  one  dumb." 

To  return  again  to  the  Eirenicon.  Your  readers  must  won- 
der by  what  blind  fatuity  the  Vicar  was  led  to  cite  Pusey  as  a 
witness  against  us  to  support  his  own  malicious,  malignant,  and 
disgustingly  ignorant  caricature  of  our  devotion  to  the  Blessed 
Mother  of  God.  Pusey's  first  volume,  indeed,  contains  the 
strongest  verbal  expressions  of  that  devotion  in  all  their  chill- 
ing nakedness.  On  these  the  Vicar  bases  his  indictment. 
And  yet  does  Pusey  denounce  the  Catholic  Church  as  "  apos- 
tate," "infidel,"  "impious,"  and  "idolatrous"?  ^Nothing  of 
the  kind.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  second  volume  he  says  to 
Father  Newman  :  "  I  have  often  (though  you  will  smile  per- 
haps at  the  advocacy)  had  to  defend  the  Roman  Church  against 
being  idolatrous,  and  that,  on  the  ground  of  this  and  the  like 
language."  Father  Newman  had  expostulated  with  Pusey,  on 
his  first  volume,  in  these  words :  "  Have  you  not  been  toucli- 
ing  us  on  a  very  tender  point  in  a  very  rude  way  ?  .  .  .  . 
Have  you  even  hinted  that  our  love  for  her  is  anything  else 
than  an  abuse?  Have  you  thrown  her  one  kind  word  yourself 
all  through  your  book  ?     I  trust  so,  but  I  have  not  lighted  upon 

one.     And  yet  I  know  you  love  her  well Is  not  the 

effect  of  what  you  have  said  to  expose  her  to  scorn  and  oblo- 
quy, who  is  dearer  to  us  than  any  other  creature  ? "  Pusey,  at 
the  close  of  his  letter,  replies  to  this  last  question  :  "  God  for- 
bid !  I  have  not  spoken,  I  trust,  anything  which  could  be  con- 
strued into  derogation  of  her,  who  is  the  Mother  of  Jesus,  my 

Lord  and  God They  are  not  any  expressions  of  love, 

or  reverence,  or  admiration,  which  I  have  stated  to  be  our  dif- 
ficulties. I  know  not  how  any  could  be  too  great,  if  they  had 
not  a  dogmatic  basis,  beyond  what  we  believe  God  to  have  re- 
vealed. And  here,  too,  if  God  had  clearly  revealed,  what  some 
among  you  believe,  there  would  be  no  further  question,  just  as 
we  believe  that  God  has  given  authority  to  the  priest  to  pro- 
nounce forgiveness  in  His  Name,  and  that  He  Himself  confirms 
to  the  penitent  what  is  so  pronounced  in  His  Name,  do  not  think 


258  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

that  the  priest  comes  between  us  and  God  ;  and  we  know  that  we 
ourselves  are  wrongly  accused  of  '  substituting  the  Sacraments 
for  Christ,'  i.e.,  the  modes  of  His  operation,  or,  in  the  Holy 

Eucharist,  His  Presence,  for  Himself Plainly,  we  could 

not  love  too  much  her,  from  whom  Jesus  vouchsafed  to  receive  a 
mother's  care,  who  loved  Ilim,  the  All-Holy  and  her  Redeemer 
too,  as  no  other  mother  could  love  her  son  ;  whom  He  loved 
with  a  Divine,  but  also  with  a  Deified  human  love ;  love  with 
which  no  other  son  could  love  his  mother.  The  love  of  the 
mother  and  Son  were  essentially  different  from  all  other  love, 
because  He  was  her  Son  after  the  Flesh,  but  also  Almighty 
God.  And  that  same  love  must  continue  on  now,  only  that 
her  God-enabled  power  of  love,  in  the  beatific  vision  of  His 
Godhead,  must  be  unspeakably  intensified."  Your  readers 
cannot  wonder,  after  words  like  these,  that  I  expressed  my 
belief  that  Dr.  Pusey  "  died  in  the  bosom  of  the  Catholic 
Church."  He  continijes :  "■  They  are  cold  words  to  say,  that 
it  is  not  the  amount  of  love  for  the  Mother  of  our  Redeemer 
and  our  God  (how  could  it  be?),  but  the  mode  of  its  expression 
to  which  any  of  us  have  objected."  Your  readers  already 
know  how  many  of  Pusey's  own  misconceptions  on  this  very 
point  were  removed  by  Father  Newman.  Indeed  I  believe 
not  one  was  left.  I  propose,  after  my  own  humble  fashion,  to 
do  the  same  office  for  those  honest,  fair-minded,  and  thought- 
ful Protestants  here,  whose  ordinary  prejudices  may  have  been 
deepened  by  the  ignorance,  dishonesty,  and  malice  of  a  pseudo- 
"  Father." 


LETTER  XXL 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IPSUM — A   KEJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  tJie  Glohe : 

SiR^ — If  it  were  my  sole  desire  to  silenoe  the  Vicar  by  a 
rt'dnctio  ad  ahsiirdum,  it  could  not  be  necessary  to  add  another 
word  to  the  testimony  to  Catholic  truth  adduced  by  his  own 


A  Rejoindek.  259 

witnesses.  But  tliis  is  neither  all  nor  any  part  of  my  desire ;  I 
wish  simply  to  do  whatever  may  lie  in  my  power,  under  the 
circumstances  in  which  I  write,  to  dissipate  certain  prejudices, 
which  exist,  and  have  been  excited,  in  the  minds  of  sincere 
Protestants,  by  the  particular  construction  of  the  language  in 
which  Catholic  piety  clothes  those  feelings  of  devotion  towards 
the  Mother  of  God,  which  I  have,  theologically,  so  irrefragably 
justified.  Devotion  is  one  thing,  theology  is  another  ;  but  they 
nmst  not  be  separated.  It  is  true  that  they  have  an  individu- 
ality of  their  own,  and  claim  separate  apartments — one  in  the 
head,  the  other  in  the  heart.  But  they  are  twin  sisters,  and 
dwell  in  one  house. 

I  closed  my  last  letter  with  the  following  quotation  from 
Pusey :  "  It  is  not  the  amount  of  love  for  the  Mother  of  our 
Pedeemer  (how  could  it  be  ?)  hut  the  mode  of  its  exjpression  to 
which  any  of  ns  have  objected."  And  the  Vicar,  speaking  of 
the  language  of  his  extracts  from  St.  Liguori  and  the  Raccolta, 
says :  "  Herein  we  find  expressions  of  worship  and  supplica- 
tion such  as  Christians  are  wont  to  present  only  to  God  or  the 
Incarnate  Son  or  the  Holy  Spirit." 

Now,  this  is  no  longer  finding  fault  with  our  doctrine  and 
practice,  but  simply  with  the  ^vord  by  which  it  is  expressed. 
Yet,  the  real  meaning  of  our  devotion  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  is 
80  clearly  defined  among  us,  and  so  plainly  explained  for  the 
benefit  of  Protestants,  that  it  is  certainly  no  fault  of  ours  if 
somebody  chooses  to  be  so  blind  or  so  obstinate,  so  ignorant  or 
so  malicious  as  to  misunderstand  or  misinterpret  our  meaning. 
I  propose,  then,  to  address  myself  just  now  to  the  argument 
against  us  drawn  by  the  Vicar  from  the  similarity  of  language 
used  by  Catholics  when  addressing  God  and  when  addressing 
the  Blessed  Virgin.  The  objection  is  so  utterly  imbecile  and 
worthless  that  I  confess  to  a  feeling  of  disgust  in  facing  it;  but 
for  the  sake  of  that  multitude  of  "hasty  and  ignorant  persons" 
I  will  give  an  easy  solution. 

In  order  to  show  that  we  give  God's  glory  to  His  Blessed 
Mother  because  of  words  expressive  of  our  hope  and  confidence 
in  her  intercession,  my  opponent  ought  to  prove,  first  of  all, 
that  our  language  is  fully  adequate  to  our  idea  of  God,  and 


260  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

secondly,  that  that  idea  is  fully  adequate  to  its  Divine  Object. 
For  until  he  has  proved  these  two  propositions,  which  are  evi- 
dently/"rt^Aie,  it  may  be  true  that  whilst  on  earth  we  are  forced 
by  the  infirmity  of  our  nature  to  give  God  only  that  glory 
which  is  due  to  His  saints,  if  even  that.  And  that  this  is 
nearer  to  the  truth  than  the  Protestant  objection,  will  appear 
on  careful  examination.  It  is  impossible  for  us  to  think  of  God 
or  Heaven  otherwise  than  under  the  subjective  conditions  of 
human  thought.  Our  conceptions  of  Him  are,  and  cannot  keep 
from  being,  anthropomorphic;  that  is  to  say,  they  are  con- 
ditioned by  the  essential  limits  of  our  nature.  It  may,  in  a 
sense,  be  said  that  we  iticarnate  God  by  a  necessity  of  our  in- 
tellectual and  spiritual  existence.  '■^Omnis  cognitio  est  secun- 
dutn  modum  cognosccntis,^''  observes  the  Angelic  Aquinas. 
We  all  start,  as  children,  with  most  human  views  of  divine 
things,  and  the  vast  multitude  of  men  remain  all  their  lives 
children  in  this  respect :  children  in  understanding,  although 
in  virtue  they  may  attain  "  unto  a  perfect  man,  unto  the  meas- 
ure of  the  stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ."  Even  the  inspired 
writers,  when  speaking  of  God  and  His  operations,  could  only 
make  themselves  intelligible  by  using  expressions  which,  if 
taken  to  the  letter,  would  sanction  the  Anthropomorphite 
lieresy.  Yet  how  unspeakably  unjust  it  would  be  for  a  cold 
rationalist  or  an  ignorant  and  conceited  Ritualist  to  accuse  them 
of  entertaining  a  narrow  or  materialized  conception  of  the 
Divine  Nature.  If  we  are  ever  to  speak  of  God,  it  must  be 
with  the  sorrowful  consciousness  how  W'retchedly  our  concep- 
tion of  Him  falls  beneath  the  reality,  and  how  miserably  our 
warmest  language  falls  below  even  that  poor  conception.  We 
would  speak  more  gloriously  of  Him.  but  we  cannot.  Human 
language  has  an  essentially  physical,  sensual,  materialistic  char- 
acter, or  as  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  puts  it :  "  Yerla  seqwitur  non 
modum  essendl  qtd  est  in  rehus,  sed  modum  essendi  secundum 
quod  in  nostra  cogitatione  sunt.""  So  too  if  wo  would  express 
our  worship  externally.  It  has  been  the  custom  in  most  ages 
and  countries  to  express  the  respect  due  to  superiors  by  pros- 
trations to  the  earth.  God  has  in  Holy  Scripture  expressly 
sanctioned  this  honor  when  paid  to  His  servants.  The  Sunamite 


A  Rkjoinder.  261 

woman  prostrated  before  Eliseus.  Joshua  "  fell  on  his  face 
and  did  worship  "  before  the  Angel  of  the  Lord's  Host.  Daniel 
fell  upon  his  face  before  God's  Angel.  Yet  what  more  coxild 
we  do  to  express  the  worship  due  to  God  alone  ?  We  are  tied 
down  to  earth — the  Finite  cannot  grasp  the  Infinite.  (See 
Fortnightly  Review,  July,  1887:  Art.  "The  Higher  Theism," 
by  the  learned  Catholic  writer,  W.  S.  Lilly ;  also,  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  August,  1888:  Art.  "What  is  Left  of  Chris- 
tianity ? "  by  the  same.)  All  this,  of  course,  is  a  mere  truism. 
Yet  the  Protestant  objection,  put  by  the  Vicar  in  his  ignorance, 
involves  its  denial.  Once  for  all  then  I  maintain,  that,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  whenever  we  have  to  address  God,  whether  by 
way  of  petition,  or  of  thanks,  or  of  expressing  our  love,  hope, 
or  confidence  in  Him,  it  is  impossible  for  us,  by  reason  of  our 
imperfection,  to  do  this  in  a  way  which  might  not  legitimately 
be  observed  in  addressing  our  fellow  creatures.  But  what  I 
have  said  respecting  our  incapacity  of  attaining  to  an  adequate 
conception  of  God,  or  of  worthily  expressing  our  worship  of 
Him,  applies  equally  to  the  Saints,  and  more  especially  to  the 
Queen  of  Saints.  We  never  can  form  the  remotest  idea  of  her 
glory  and  exaltation  :  "  Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither 
hath  it  entered  into  the  heart  of  man,  what  things  God  hath 
prepared  for  them  that  love  Him  "  (1  Cor.  ii.  9).  We  need  not, 
therefore,  be  apprehensive  of  too  highly  exalting  her.  We 
cannot  possibly  love  her  or  honor  her  more  than  God,  our 
Saviour  and  great  Exemplar,  does ;  we  need  not,  therefore,  be 
afraid  of  loving  or  honoring  her  too  much.  We  cannot  realize 
the  full  value  of  her  intercession  ;  we  need  not,  therefore,  be 
afraid  of  placing  too  much  confidence  in  it. 

I  am,  of  course,  aware  that  there  are  several  of  the  ordinary, 
ridiculous  objections  to  what  I  have  just  said,  but  they  vanish 
if  only  looked  at.  It  may,  for  instance,  be  said  that  a  person 
loves  the  Blessed  Mary  too  much  if  he  loves  her  more  than  he 
loves  God.  Not  at  all.  He  sins  indeed  very  grievously,  but 
not  from  his  excess  of  love  for  her  (he  cannot  possibly  love  her 
enough),  but  from  his  want  of  love  for  God.  Or  it  may  be 
said  that  a  person  who  feels  sure  that  the  Mother  of  God  will 
obtain  from  her  Son  the  pardon  of  his  sins,  however  careless 


262  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

he  may  be  of  his  own  salvation,  has  too  much  confidence  in 
her  intercession.  By  no  means ;  he  is  guilty  of  the  sin  of  jjre- 
Bumption,  precisely  in  the  same  way  as  if  he  hoped  that  God 
Himself  would  pardon  him  whether  he  repented  or  not.  Ko 
one  would,  in  the  latter  case,  say  that  he  had  too  much  confi- 
dence in  God's  power — which  would  mean  that  God's  power 
was  less  than  he  estimated  it. 

Tliis  will  suffice,  for  the  present,  on  this  point ;  but  I  proceed 
to  ask,  who  are  to  blame  for  the  truly  pitiable  misunderstand- 
ing, and  strange  perversion  of  the  meaning  of  the  language  of 
such  of  our  devotional  books  as  St.  Liguori's  "  Glories  of  Mary  " 
and  the  "  Raccolta  "  \  Protestants  themselves.  The  chief  reason 
is  because  they  examine  them  as  Protestants,  and  not  as  Catholics. 
Our  devotional  books  are  written  for  Catholics,  and  not  for 
Protestants ;  and  therefore  to  be  understood  aright,  they  must 
be  looked  at  from  a  Catholic  and  not  from  a  Protestant  point 
of  view.  This  is  surely  the  dictate  of  common  sense.  Let  me 
apply  it  to  the  subject  in  hand. 

A  Protestant  has  learned  from  his  childhood  to  believe  that 
the  devotion  which  Catholics  pay  to  the  Mother  of  God,  if  not 
absolutely  idolatrous,  has  at  least  an  idolatrous  tendency.  Hence 
the  term  Mariolatory,  which  is  so  common  among  "  hasty  and 
ignorant"  Protestants,  who  may  not  have  another  religioua 
idea  beside.  This  early  training  is  more  and  more  confirmed 
in  proportion  as  he  becomes  familiar  with  Protestant  literature 
in  which  Catholic  doctrine  is  almost  invariably  misrepresented. 
Thus  he  naturally  comes  to  look  with  suspicion  and  distrust  on 
the  language  in  which  the  great  dignity  and  the  high  preroga- 
tives of  the  ever  Blessed  Mother  of  God,  are  set  forth  by 
Catholic  writers.  By  a  lamentable  and  quasi-satanic  perversion 
of  his  natural  instincts,  he  insensibly  acquires  such  a  habit  of 
mind,  that,  while  he  may  love  God,  he  can  feel  nothing  but  cold- 
ness and  indifference  (to  speak  mildly)  towards  her  whom  Jesus 
Christ  loved  and  honored  as  the  first  of  creatures.  In  theory 
he  will  not,  aJid  cannot  deny  that  Mary  was  adorned  by  God 
with  the  plenitude  of  every  virtue;  and  then,  when  she  stood 
before  Him  "full  of  grace,"  that  He  came  down  from  Heaven, 
and  having  dwelt  for  nine  months  in  her  sacred  body,  lived 


A  Rejoindeb.  2Go 

with  her  for  thirty  years  in  her  home  at  Nazareth  and  "  was 
subject "  to  her.  And  yet,  in  practice,  he  seems  to  think  tliat 
every  word  of  praise  which  is  given  to  Mary  is  so  much  taken 
from  God.  A  Protestant,  therefore,  is  little  disposed  to  make 
any  allowance  for  the  ardor  of  devotional  feeling  towards  tlie 
Blessed  Virgin.  \1q  professes  to  be  jealous,  forsooth,  for  the 
honor  of  God  when  he  sees  a  Catholic  rush  eagerly  to  Mary, 
as  a  child  to  the  embraces  of  its  mother,  and  when  he  hears 
the  fond  endearments  that  pass  between  them,  he  measures 
every  word,  and  balances  every  phrase  by  the  iincompromis- 
ing  rules  of  grammar  and  logic.  In  a  word,  the  ordinary  Prot- 
estant is  so  matter-of-fact  as  not  to  make  allowance  for  the 
language  of  hyperbole ;  and  so  untheological,  as  not  to  have 
any  clear  intnition  of  the  mystery  of  the  Divine  condescension 
in  the  Incarnation,  of  the  union  of  the  Godhead  and  Manhood 
in  One  Divine  Person,  of  the  relation  of  the  great  Mother  of 
God  to  the  "Living  God  who  has  purchased  us  to  Himself  by 
His  own  Blood,"  and  of  the  mystery  of  hutnan  exaltation,  by 
which  the  redeemed  and  she  who  is  the  first  and  best  of  the 
redeemed,  "are  seated  in  Heavenly  places  with  Christ"  on  that 
throne  which  He  shares  with  His  Eternal  Father. 

Now,  far  different  is  the  tone  of  mind  in  which  a  Catholic 
takes  up  his  book  of  devotions.  To  begin  with,  he  has  a 
range  of  spiritual  conceptions  which  are  as  remote  from  the 
twinkling,  phosphorescent  philosophy  of  the  Yicar  as  from  the 
mental  vision  of  the  rudest  boor.  From  the  time  that  his 
infant  lips  have  been  able  to  lisp  the  name  of  Mary,  he  has 
been  taught  that,  though  she  is  the  peerless  Queen  of  Angels 
and  Saints,  she  is  yet  but  a  creature,  and  therefore,  in  nature 
and  dignity,  infinitely  inferior  to  the  Creator.  It  is  conse- 
quently to  him  a  first  principle  that  the  honor  which  is  due  to 
the  Blessed  Virgin  is  not  only  very  different  in  degree^  but 
also  wholly  different  in  kind,  from  the  honor  which  is  due  to 
God.  All  this  has  been  engraved  on  his  mind  from  earliest 
infancy,  as  the  fixed,  unalterable  teaching  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  If  then,  amid  the  ardent  effusions  of  saintly,  devo- 
tional writers,  he  meets  with  phrases  and  expressions  which  to 
Protestants  might  seem  ambiguous  or  exaggerated,  he  is  not 


-64  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

disturbed.     He,  instinctively,  understands  these  accordinj;  to 
the  accurate  theology  and  whole  living  tradition  of  Catholic 
faith  in  which  he  has  been  taught  from  his  inother's  knee.    He 
holds  the  key  to  the  true  interpretation.    Such  language,  when 
considered  in  itself,  scrutinized  through  the  medium  of  Protest- 
ant prejudice  and  ignorance,  and  measured  by  the  inexorable 
rules  of  grammar  and  logic,  is  ambiguous  to  Protestants ;   but 
it  is  not  ambiguous  to  Catholics  for  whom  it  is  written.     It  is 
sometimes  exaggerated,  if  you  will ;  but  the  language  of  senti- 
ment and  feeling  is  often  exaggerated,  and  yet  is  not,  on  that 
account,  false :  it  must  be  always  understood  according  to  the 
known  opinions  of  the  writer,  and  of  those  for  whom  he  writes. 
Again,  a  Catholic  knows  that  the  warm  feelings  of  saintly  men, 
when  contemplating  the  sublime  holiness  of  Mary,  must  some- 
times outrun  their  powers  of  speech  ;  that  they  will  not  always 
stop  to  pick  and  choose  their  language  with  the  calm  indiffer- 
ence of  a  mathematician  ;    and   that  very  often  their  only 
thought  is  to  give  the  fullest  expression  to  the  depth  and  ten- 
derness of  their  devotion.    In  a  word,  the  Catholic;  heart  is  so 
attuned  to  praise  and  venerate  liis  Redeemer's  dearest  mother, 
that  it  is  little  inclined  to  measure  her  glories  with  the  line 
and  plummet  of  verbal  precision,  or  to  express  them  through 
the  chilling  medium  of  chemical  or  algebraic  formulas.   Never- 
theless, "Fools  rush  in  where  angels  fear  to   tread,"  and  a 
ritualistic  vicar,  with  the  aid  of  a  "yard  stick,''  will  undertake 
to  determine  anything  from  the  altitude  and  angles  of  an  Arch- 
angel's wing  down  to  the  cut  of  a  vestment.     The  great  St. 
Bernard  is  called  the  "  Last  of  the  Fathers."    Bishop  Kingdon 
said  he  was  "  a  very  devout  soul."    He  had  a  great  devotion  to 
the  Blessed  Virgin.     The  Vicar  '^npies  from  Saint  Liguori 
language  attributed  to  St.  Bernard,  and  straightaway  character- 
izes it  as  "abominable"!    Think  of  it!     The  "Priest  of  the 
Mission  Chapel "  sitting  in  judgment  on  St.  Bernard !    Truly : 
"  The  sensual  man  perceivetli  not  these  things  that  are  of  the 
Spirit  of  God :   for  it  is  foolishness  to  him,  and  he  cannot  un- 
derstand "  (1.  Cor.  ii.  14). 

Let  me  sum  up  my  reflections  on  this  head  in  the  words  of 
the  greatest  religious  intellect  that  to-day  uses  the  English 


A  Rkjoindkr.  2G5 

tongue,  and  one  of  the  purest  hearts  in  Christendom.  Father 
^'ewman  wrote: 

"Religion  acts  on  the  affections Their  object  engrosses 

them,  and  they  see  nothing  else.  And  of  all  passions  love  is  the 
most  unmanageable;  nay  more,  I  would  not  give  nmcli  for  that 
love  which  is  never  exti-avagant,  which  always  observes  the 
proprieties,  and  can  move  about  in  perfect  good  taste  under  all 
emergencies.  What  mother,  what  husband  or  wife,  what  youth  or 
maiden  in  love,  but  says  a  thousand  foolish  thitigs,  in  the  way  of 
endearment,  which  the  speaker  would  be  sorry  for  strangers  to 
hear;  yet  they  are  not  on  that  account  unwelcome  to  the  parties 
to  whom  they  are  addressed.  Sometimes  by  bad  luck  they  are 
Avritten  down,  sometimes  they  get  into  the  uewspapei-s ;  and  what 
might  be  even  graceful  when  it  was  fresh  from  the  heart  and  in- 
tei-pi-eted  by  the  voice  and  the  countenance,  presents  but  a  melan- 
clioly  exhibition  when  served  up  cold  for  the  public  eye.  So  it 
is  ivith  devotional  feelings.  Burning  thoughts  and  u'ords  are 
as  open  to  criticism  as  they  are  beyond  it.  What  is  abstractedly  ex- 
travagant may  in  particular  pei-sons  be  becoming  and  beautiful, 
and  only  fall  under  blame  when  it  is  found  in  others  who  imitate 
them.  When  it  is  formalized  into  meditations  or  exercises,  it  is  as 
repulsive  as  love-letters  in  a  police  report.  Moreover,  even  holy 
minds  readily  adopt  and  become  familiar  with  language  which 
they  would  never  have  originated  themselves,  when  it  proceeds  from 
a  writer  who  has  the  same  objects  of  devotion  as  they  have ;  and,  if 
they  find  a  stranger  ridicule  or  reprobate  supplication  or  praise 
which  has  come  to  them  so  recommended,  they  feel  it  as  keenly  as 
if  a  direct  insult  were  offered  to  those  to  whom  that  homage  is  ad- 
dressed.    In  the  next  place,  what  has  power  to  stir  holy  and  refined 

souls  is  potent  also  with  the  multitude I  say,  then,  when  once 

we  have  mastered  the  idea,  that  Mary  bore,  suckled,  and  handled 
the  Eternal  in  the  form  of  a  child,  what  limit  is  conceivable  to  the 
rush  and  flood  of  thoughts  which  such  a  doctrine  involves?  What 
awe  and  surprise  must  attend  upon  the  knowledge,  that  a  creature 
has  been  brought  so  close  to  the  Divine  Essence? 

"It  was  the  creation  of  a  new  idea,  and  of  a  new  sympathy,  of  a 
new  faith  and  worship  when  the  holy  Apostles  announced  that  God 
had  become  Incarnate  •  then  a  supreme  love  and  devotion  to  Him 
became  possible,  which  seemed  hopeless  before  that  revelation.  This 
was  the  first  consequence  of  their  preaching.  But,  besides  this,  a 
second  range  of  thoughts  was  opened  on  mankind,  unknown  before, 
and  unlike  any  other,  as  soon  as  it  was  understood  that  that  Incar- 
nate God  had  a  mother.    The  second  idea  is  perfectly  distinct  from 


2G0  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ii'sum. 

the  former,  and  does  not  interfere  with  it.     He  is  God  made  low, 

she  is  a  woman  made  higli He  who  charges  ua  with  making 

Mary  a  divinity  ia  thereby  denyiny  the  divinity  of  Jesus.  Such 
a  man  does  not  know  what  divinity  is.  Our  Lord  cannot  pray 
for  us  as  a  creature  prays,  as  Mary  prays ;  He  cannot  inspire  tliose 
feelings  which  a  creature  inspires.  To  her  belongs,  as  being  a  crea- 
ture, a  natural  claim  on  our  sympathy  and  familiarity,  in  that  she 
is  nothing  else  than  our  fellow.  She  is  our  pride  -in  the  iM)et's  words, 
'  Our  tainted  nature's  solitary  boast.'  We  look  to  her  without  any 
fear,  any  remorse,  any  consciousness  that  she  is  able  to  read  us, 
judge  us,  punish  us.  Our  heart  yearns  towards  that  pure  Virgin, 
that  gentle  Mother,  and  our  congratulations  follow  her  as  she  ri.se3 
from  Nazareth  and  Ephesus,  through  the  choii-s  of  angels,  to  her 
throne  on  high,  so  weak,  yet  so  strong ;  so  delicate,  yet  so  glorious ; 
so  modest,  and  yet  so  mighty.  She  has  sketched  for  us  her  own 
portrait  in  the  Magnificat.  He  hath  regarded  the  low  estate  of  His 
handmaid;  for,  behold,  from  henceforth  all  generations  shall  call 
me  blessed.  '  He  hath  put  down  the  mighty  from  their  seat,  and 
hath  exalted  the  humble.  He  hath  filled  the  hungry  with  good 
things,  and  the  rich  He  hath  sent  empty  away.'  I  recollect  the 
strange  emotion  which  took  by  surprise  men  and  women,  young 
and  old,  when,  at  the  coronation  of  our  present  Queen,  they  gazed 
on  the  figure  of  one  so  like  a  child,  so  small,  so  tender,  so  shrink- 
ing, who  had  been  exalted  to  so  great  an  inheritance  and  so  vast  a 
rule,  who  was  such  a  contrast  in  her  own  person  to  the  solemn 
pageant  which  centred  in  her.  Could  it  be  otherwise  with  the 
spectators,  if  they  had  human  affections?  And  did  not  the  All-wise 
know  the  human  heart  when  He  took  to  Himself  a  MotLei'  ?  Did 
He  not  anticipate  our  emotion  at  the  sight  of  such  an  exaltation  in 
one  so  simple  and  so  lowly?  If  He  had  not  meant  her  to  exert  that 
wonderful  influence  in  His  church,  which  she  has  in  the  event  ex- 
erted, I  will  use  a  bold  word.  He  it  is  who  has  perverted  us.  If  she 
is  not  to  attract  our  homage,  why  did  He  make  her  solitary  in  her 
greatness  amid  His  vast  creation?  If  it  be  idolatry  in  us  to  let  our 
affections  respond  to  our  faith,  He  would  not  have  made  her  what 
she  is,  or  He  would  not  have  told  us  that  He  had  so  made  her ;  hut, 
far  from  this.  He  has  sent  His  prophet  to  announce  to  us,  'A 
virgin  shall  conceive  and  bear  a  Son,  and  they  shall  call  His  name 
Emmanuel,'  and  we  have  the  same  warrant  for  hailing  her  as 
God's  Mother,  as  we  have  for  adoring  Him  as  God.''^ 

So  much  in  explanation  of  the  ordinary  language  used  by 
devotional  writers. 


A   EUOLNDEB.  267 

LETTEK  XXII. 

IPSE,    IPSA,   IP8UM — A    REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  come  now  to  anotlier  Guy  Fawkes  dressed  up  by  the 
Vicar  with  the  old  clothes  he  borrows  from  Piisey.  His  mind 
(or  what  he  may  be  plesised  to  call  his  mind)  seems  to  be  utter 
chaos.  There  is  some  sort  of  order  in  Pusey's  manner  of  put- 
ting his  objections,  but  his  parasite  simply  "rfwm/w"  them  into 
your  columns  in  bewildering  confusion.  I  propose  now  to 
consider  the  objection  based  on  the  application  to  Mary  of 
Scriptural  language.  Pusey  complained,  in  the  Jirst  volume 
of  the  Eirenicon,  that  there  was  a  studied  identiiication  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  with  her  Divine  Son,  because  the  church  has 
applied  to  her  passages  from  the  Book  of  Proverbs  and  of  Wis- 
dom, which  have  been  interpreted  and  understood  to  refer  to 
Christ.  In  the  second  volume,  however,  Pusey  confesses  that 
Anglicans  "  are  not  accustomed  to  mystical  interpretations  of 
Scripture."  The  Vicar  simply  varies  Pusey's  language  and 
falsely  says,  "  There  is  not  a  title  of  Jesus  Christ  but  has  been 
adopted  for  Mary."  But  let  this  malicious  charge  stand  with 
Pusey's  more  honest  complaint.  It  will  make  the  supposed 
difficulty  more  telling  and  complete.  Again  he  says  that  we 
"substitute  Mary's  name  for  'Jesus' or  'God' in  quotations 
from  Scripture." 

Now  this  objection  is  deserving  of  all  attention,  and  I  am 
happy  to  answer,  as  well  as  to  instruct,  this  Oxford  sciolist. 
Such  application  of  language,  I  claim,  is  perfectly  legitimate, 
according  to  sound  hermeneutical  principles.  I  begin,  then, 
by  laying  down  a  general  principle  of  Bible  hermeneutics, 
which  has  received  the  sanction  of  the  greatest  names  among 
the  Fathers  and  Doctors  of  the  church.  And  I  give  it  in  the 
concise  and  simple  words  of  St.  Jerome :  "  Each  sentence, 
syllable,  dot,  in  the  Divine  Scriptures  is  full  of  meanings."  Or 
as  St.  Gregory  the  Great  tells  us :  "  The  sacred  writings  are 
rightly  compared  to  the  Sea ;  for  in  them  there  are  huge  bil- 


268  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

lows  of  meanings,  wave  upon  wave  of  senses."  The  Bible  is 
not  like  other  books,  nor  can  we  treat,  use,  or  interpret  it,  as 
we  do  other  books.  When  we  read  a  classical  author,  Greek 
or  Latin,  we  know  that  there  is  one  sense ;  and  our  undivided 
effort  is  to  find  out  what  that  sense  is.  But  the  Sacred  Script- 
ures are  an  unfathomable  ocean  of  truth,  because  they  are 
God's  word.  The  whole  theological  genius  of  the  church  will 
never  to  the  end  of  time  exhaust  their  fullness.  One  meaning 
lies  hidden  in  another — the  implicit  in  the  explicit,  the  spiritual 
in  the  historical,  the  anagogical  in  the  moral.  And  these 
several  meanings — distinct,  but  not  opposed — extending  the 
representative  power  of  the  Divine  Idea  to  many  objects,  yet 
welling  out  from  the  depths  of  the  Uncreated  Unity,  and  re- 
turning to  it  again — beautifully  multiform,  but  perfectly  har- 
monious— ever  developing  into  new  mysteries,  yet  ever  living 
pure  and  innnutable  in  the  Eternity  of  their  Source  and 
Light,  are  (if  they  have  the  due  sanction  of  the  illuminating 
and  directing  Spirit,  Whose  it  is  to  bring  all  things  to  remem- 
brance in  the  Church),  of  equal  weight,  equal  authority,  equal 
truth  and  certainty.  And  thus,  one  text  may  be  adduced  to 
illustrate,  or  even  prove,  two  or  more  distinct  truths  without 
impairing  the  force  of  the  proof  in  the  one  case  or  the  other. 
Thus,  for  instance,  St.  Paul  quotes  the  words  of  the  Psalmist — 
Ps.  ii.  7 — '•  Thou  art  my  Son ;  this  day  have  I  begotten 
Thee,"  in  proof  of  three  distinct  mysteries.  For,  in  one  place 
— Acts  xiii.  33 — he  interprets  them  of  our  Lord's  Resurrec- 
tion ;  in  another — Ileb.  i.  5 — ajjparently  of  His  Divine  gener- 
ation as  the  Son  of  God  ;  and  in  a  third — Heb.  v.  5 — of  His 
human  generation  in  the  womb  of  the  Blessed  Virgin. 

The  learned  Piazza  has  explained  this  law  of  Scriptural  ex- 
egesis with  so  much  clearness  that  I  beg  to  quote  his  words  at 
length.    He  says: 

"We  must  tlistinguish  between  two  other  literal  senses  of  Holy 
Scriptures — one  which  is  explicit  and  express,  tiie  other  whicli  is 
implicit  and  virtual.  For  the  genuine  and  literal  sense  of  Scripture 
not  only  includes  wlip.tever  is  clearly  and  expressly  stated  in  the  i)re- 
cise  words  of  Scripture  whether  undei-stood  in  their  proper  or  in  their 
metaphorical  meaning,  but  also  whatever  is  implicitly  and  virtually 


A  Rejoinder.  209 

contained  in  them,  as  well  as  all  the  legitimate  consequences  we  can 
draw  from  them.  For  the  Holy  Ghost,  Who  knows  most  fully  all 
that  these  woi-ds  mean  and  imply,  wished  to  convey  these  senses  to 

us Our  Lonl  certainly  adduced   Scripture  evidence  of  this 

sort  to  convince  the  Sadducees  of  the  Resurrection  of  the  dead.  For 
as  they  did  not  admit  the  books  in  which  this  dogma  is  expressly 
taught,  but  only  the  Pentateuch,  our  Lord  quoted  Exodus  iii.  6, 
where  this  truth  is  only  virtually  and  implicitly  contained.  '  Have 
you  not  read  about  the  Resurrection  of  the  dead,'  He  asked,  '  what 
was  said  by  God  when  He  said,  I  atn  the  Jrod  of  Abraham,  the  God 
of  Lsaac,  and  the  God  of  Jacob? '  He  then  added  this  brief  explana- 
tion :  '  He  is  not  the  God  of  the  dead,  but  of  the  living.'  The  force 
of  the  argument  lies  in  this,  that  God  did  not  say,  '  I  have  been  or 
I  was,  but  I  am  the  God, '  &c.  As  God  then  is  not  the  God  of  the 
dead,  but  of  the  living,  it  follows  that  Abi-aham,  I«iac,  and  Jacob 
are  still  living  as  far  as  their  noblest  pai't  is  concerned,  namely, 
tiieir  souls.  And  so  the  Resurrection  of  the  dead  is  proved  against 
the  Sadducees,  who  denied  it,  because  they  denied  that  the  soul  was 
immortal.  And  yet  our  Lord  mair  ^ains  that  these  words  were  said 
by  God  of  the  Resurrection  of  the  dead,  for  He  tells  the  Sadducees  : 
'  Have  you  not  read  about  the  Resurrection  of  the  dead  what  was 
said  by  God,  when  He  said,'  &c. 

"  The  Church,  taught  by  her  great  Master,  used  the  Scriptures  ui 
the  same  way." 

So  speaks  Piazza  about  the  virtual  or  implicit  meaning, 
Now  coine  nearer  home.  lie  also  speaks  of  the  mystical 
meaning  (to  which  Anglicans  are  so  unaccustomed,  God  help 
them !),  i;    'lese  words : 

"  As  the  literal  sense  )i  Holy  Scriptui'e  is  that  which  is  immedi- 
ately expressed  by  the  woi-ds,  so,  the  mystical  sense  is  that  which  is 
denoted  by  the  things  signified  in  the  words  of  Scrii)ture.  More- 
over, it  is  certain  that  this  mystical  sense  (if  it  is  truly  the  mystical 
sense,  and  not  a  mere  acconnnodation)  is  a  true,  i)roper.  and  genu- 
ine meanhig  of  Holy  Scripture  no  less  than  the  literal  ;  and  is 
equally  intended  by  Its  ])rincipal  Author,  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
therefore,  considered  in  itself,  it  has  the  same  authority  and  weight. 
....  And  wo  may  be  perfectly  sure  of  the  truth  of  this  mystical 
sense,  if  it  is  either  so  exphiined  in  some  other  part  of  Scripture,  or 
handed  down  by  the  consent  of  the  Church  or  concluded  evidently 
fi*om  reason." 

Let  me  liere  make  one  observation,  lost  tins  principle  should 


270  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

be  misunderstood.  It  must  not  for  one  moment  he  supposed, 
tliat  we  are  at  perfect  liberty  to  invent  meanings  for  ourselves, 
and  tlien  to  use  texts,  accommodated  to  this  meaning,  in  con- 
firmation of  a  particular  doctrine,  according  to  our  private 
judgment.  But  wbat  Catholics  maintain  is  this.  If  a  second 
meaning,  or  even  a  secondary  meaning,  has  been  attached  to 
the  words  by  the  traditional  teaching  of  the  church,  or  in  the 
writings  of  her  Fathers  and  Doctors  generally,  in  such  case  it 
would  be  hardly  possible  to  deny  that  the  passage,  so  under- 
stood, might  be  produced  in  confirnntion  of  a  question  of  doc- 
trine. Here  Piazza  again  says:  "If  there  should  be  au  evi- 
dent agreement  about  the  mystical  as  about  the  literal  sense, 
the  one  and  the  other  would  be  equally  efficacious  as  an  argu- 
ment; since  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  Author  alike  of  both." 
And  more  germanely  to  our  present  topic  he  says :  "  There  is 
nothing  to  liinder  our  understanding  the  same  passages  to  have 
been  spoken  of  Mary  in  a  literal  sense,  which  are  also  under- 
stood of  Christ  and  the  Church  in  a  literal  sense ;  since  She  is 
the  most  noble  moml^er  of  the  Church,  and  is  united  to  Christ 
by  that  close  near  less  which  exists  between  a  Mother  and  her 
Son.  Moreover,  it  has  been  the  custom  of  the  Church  to 
apply  to  Mary  mnny  things  wliich  are  predicted  in  the  Script- 
ures of  Christ  and  the  Church."  In  support  of  his  assertion 
Piazza  quotes  celebrated  theologians.' 

Now,  applying  these  principles  to  the  objections  under  con- 
sideration, let  me  ask  your  candid  and  thoughtful  readers :  Is 
there  any  danger  of  a  gradual  identification  of  yLxry  with  her 
Divine  Son  to  be  apprehended,  from  a  use  of  the  Holy  Script- 
ures consecrated  by  grave  authority,  and  the  long-established 
practice  of  the  Church  herself?  Will  devout  and  humble 
contemplation  ever  run  the  ri.slv  of  confounding  the  Wisdom 
of  the  Son  of  God  with  the  communicated  gift  of  wisdom, 
which  Mary  received  of  God's  pure  goodness,  and  for  the 
merits  of  Jesus — her  Son  and  Saviour  'i  Has  any  one  Priest 
in  the  Catholic  Church  for  these  centuries  during  which  her 
Offices  have  been  in  constant  use,  ever  equalled  Mary  with 


See  Father  Hai-per,  1.  c. 


A  Rejoinder.  271 

God,  because,  in  the  appointed  Lessons,  Holy  Cluircli  lias 
taught  him  to  see,  in  the  \vor.ds  of  Inspired  Wisdom,  a  picture 
of  the  Mother  as  well  as  of  the  Son  ?  Why  shouhl  not  my 
Protestant  objectors  have  the  same  misgivings,  when  St.  Paul 
calls  the  church  or  congregation  of  the  faithful  by  the  very 
name  of  Christ  Himself  '{  (1  Cor.  xii.  12).  If  there  is  no  peril 
in  one  case  why  should  there  be  in  the  other?  I  must  then 
urge  upon  honest,  thoughtful  Protestants,  and  repeat  for  their 
beiieiit,  what  has  been  said  a  hundred  times  before,  that  such 
a  notion  could  only  arise  in  the  minds  of  men  who  are  total 
strangers  to  the  inner  life  of  the  Catholic  Church,  It  is  a 
dream,  a  nightmare,  a  phantom  evoked  perhaps  by  prejudice 
and  the  ignorant  ravings  of  a  Vicar,  but  which  a  month's 
experience  in  the  bosom  of  the  Church  would  suffice  to  dissi- 
pate. 

Once  more.  The  difference  between  the  Catholic  Church 
and  the  modern  schools  of  heresy  is  remarkably  api)arent  in 
their  respective  treatment  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures.  Protest- 
.iitisin,  professing  to  regard  the  inspired  volume  with  the 
deepest  reverence,  is  continually  by  its  acts  giving  the  lie  to 
its  professions.  For,  not  contented  with  rejecting  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  Holy  Scriptures  as  being  in  its  opinion  unworthy 
of  Divine  inspiration ;  not  satisfied  with  setting  aside  the 
acknowledged  standard  and  rules  of  interpretation,  and  with 
rejecting,  whenever  it  suits  its  convenience,  the  literal  sense  of 
the  Sacred  Words,  the  true  Protestant  spirit  treats  the  Bible, 
as  it  does  everything  else  that  is  holy,  with  a  cold,  hard,  and 
scornful  scepticism.  Where  there  is  mystery  the  literal  mean- 
ing is  denied  and  explained  away.  Where  certain  exi)ressions 
of  Scripture  appear  to  fall  in  with  and  to  favor  its  own 
peculiar  conventionalities,  those  expressions  are  explained  with 
a  rigid  severity  totally  inconsistent  with  the  laws  of  true  inter- 
pretation. The  Bible,  in  such  hands,  is  either  an  armory  of 
Protestant  Polemics,  or  a  t  ollection  of  dry,  barren,  pharisaical 
rules  of  conduct,  imposing  burdens  upon  men's  consciences 
which  God  Ahnighty  never  w^illed  to  impose,  and  inculcating 
a  rigid  and  constrained  code  of  morals,  as  unlike  the  sweet, 
cheerful,  and  holy  law  of  Christ  as  the  light  of  the  sun  is  un- 


272  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

like  the  darkness  of  night.  There  are,  of  course,  eases  of  ex- 
ception to  this  statement,  since  individuals,  the  Vicar  assures 
us,  are  very  often  much  better  than  the  system  which  has 
formed  and  trained  them  ;  but  the  statement  itself  is  true. 
Protestantism,  even  when  decked  out  by  ritualistic  "  Fathers  " 
in  the  lion's  skin  of  stolen  Catholic  ritual,  lacks  love,  generos- 
ity, and  depth  of  feeling ;  and  these  deficiencies  are  remark- 
ably manifested  in  its  use  and  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures. 
The  Catholic  religion,  on  the  other  hand,  brings  to  the  study 
of  the  Sacred  Volume  all  that  warmth  and  all  that  devotional 
feeling  which  is  the  marked  characteristic  of  its  inner  life.  It 
is  not  afraid  of  the  Inspired  Volume,  of  which  it  is  both  the 
witness  and  the  keeper,  therefore  it  admits,  defends,  and  pro- 
tects the  literal  sense  of  the  Bible.  It  believes  the  Sacred 
Scriptures  to  be  the  Words  of  Him  whose  Wisdom  is  infinite, 
and  whose  actions,  and  whose  dealings  with  men  are  them- 
selves full  of  mystery,  hence  its  threefold  use  of  Scripture — 
according  to  the  letter  (literal),  according  to  \\\q  figure  (mys- 
tical), and  by  Accommodation.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the 
first  two.  I  ask  your  readers'  attention  to  some  remarks  on 
the  third,  in  its  application  to  the  Blessed  Mary. 

At  all  times  the  Church  has  applied  the  words  of  Scripture 
to  other  objects  besides  those  which  are  intended  by  the  in- 
spired writers  themselves;  not,  indeed,  meaning  by  this  to 
supersede  the  literal  and  mystical  senses,  or  to  convey  the  im- 
l)rcssi()n  that  such  ecclesiastical  applications  are  really  enter- 
tained in  Scrij)ture,  or  rest  upon  its  authority;  but  simply 
intending  to  point  out  some  quality  some  virtne  or  some 
prerogative,  in  the  object  of  this  new  application,  which, 
in  its  own  judgment,  is  suitably  and  aj)tly  expressed  by  certain 
words  of  the  sacred  vohniie.  This  is  what  is  called  accommo- 
dation. No  practice  is  more  common  in  every  department  of 
literature  and  speech — none  more  innocent  in  itself.  Thus 
when  the  illustrious  Cardinal  Baronius,  to  declare  he  had  no 
"  learned  friends,^''  said  of  \\\^  unaided  labor  in  compiling  his 
Ecclesiastical  Annals,  "I  have  trodden  the  wine-press  alone,'' 
he  Tised  the  words  of  Isaias,  in  reference  to  Christ,  in  an 
accommodated  sense.     We  have  the  example  of  our  Divine 


A  Rejoindeb.  273 

Lord  Himself — Matt.  iv.  4;  also  of  St.  Paul,  Acts  xxviii. 
25-28.  For  other  examples  of  accommodation  of  words  of 
the  Old  Testament  in  the  New  I  refer  to  Matt.  xiii.  35  ;  Psa. 
xxviii.  2 ;  1  Pet.  ii.  24 ;  Matt.  viii.  17 ;  Isa.  iii.  4.  The  piety 
of  the  church  has  made  the  Scripture  its  daily  food  of  medita- 
tion. When  it  seeks  to  express  itself  in  a  suitable  manner 
about  the  glory  of  God,  or  the  gifts  of  His  Saints,  it  naturally 
employs  the  very  words  of  the  Holy  Scripture  itself.  It  is 
upon  this  principle  that  all  its  sacred  offices  have  been  con- 
structed. The  Introit,  the  Offertory,  and  the  Conunnnion  in 
the  Mass,  are  almost  always  passages  of  Scripture  accommo- 
dated by  the  church  to  the  particular  festivals  of  the  day.  So 
also  are  the  Antiphons  and  Yersicles,  and  other  portions  of  the 
offices  contained  in  the  Breviary.  In  a  word,  the  natural  lan- 
guage of  the  church  is  the  language  of  Scripture,  and  it 
employs  this  language,  either  (1)  to  state  a  truth,  or  doctrhie. 
or  fact,  as  the  holy  volume  literally  contains  or  states  it ;  or  (2) 
to  teach  some  truth,  fact,  or  doctrine,  of  which  the  type  and 
emblem  is  to  be  found  in  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures,  and  is 
there  designed  by  the  Holy  Ghost ;  or  finally  (3)  to  illustrate 
some  fact  or  truth  in  the  kingdom  of  grace,  by  woi-ds  which 
most  appropriately  apply  to  the  fact  or  truth,  although  the  in- 
spired Author  did  not  intend  to  make  sucli  application  of 
them,  when  he  first  committed  them  to  writing.  Such,  then, 
is  the  natiire  of  accommodation — the  pious  application  of 
sacred  words  to  other  objects  than  those  designed  by  the 
sacred  writers. 

Pusey  says:  "Any  imnginations  of  ours  must  come  short  of 
the  truth,  if  we  would  picture  to  ourselves  the  superhuman, 
engraced  beauty  of  the  soul  of  (Mary)."  Precisely.  Fully 
realizing  this  truth  the  Fathers  and  Christian  writers  of  the 
Church  delighted  to  apply  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  texts  and 
parts  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  in  which  they  seemed  to  find 
epithets  and  images  that  expressed  in  the  fittest  terms  their 
own  idea  of  her  supernatural  prerogatives.  They  applied  to 
her  in  an  especial  way  the  Song  of  Solommi,  which  according 
to  Theologians  has  only  a  mystical,  and  no  literal  sense ;  and 
in  this  mystical  sense,  it  relates  either   to  the   union  of  the 


27-i  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

soul  with  God,  or  to  the  union  of  tlie  Churcli  with  Christ. 
But  as  Mary  is  the  most  excellent  ineniher  of  the  (Jhurch,  on 
whom  is  conferred  in  its  fullness  the  grace  that  is  pa  'tially  be- 
stowed uj)on  others,  it  is  not  unnatural  to  infer  that  all  which 
is  expressed  in  this  Canticle  with  respect  to  the  magnificence, 
tlie  beauty,  the  order  and  sanctity  of  the  Church,  applies  in 
the  highest  degree  to  her  own  supereminent  perfection.  It 
M'ould  take  too  much  space  to  show  by  quotations  how  exten- 
sively accommodations  of  this  Canticle  to  Mary  occur  in  the 
Patristic  and  Ecclesiastical  writings  of  antiquity.  They  are  to 
be  found  in  the  Mozarabic  and  Coptic  Missals,  the  Hymns  of 
the  Greek  Church,  the  Missals  and  Breviaries  of  the  Latin 
Church,  in  various  other  ecclesiastical  monuments,  and  in  the 
writings  of  St.  John  Damascene,  Tarasius,  Methodius,  Modes- 
tus  jf  Jerusalem,  St.  Ephrem,  Psellus,  Anastasius  of  Antioch, 
St.  Germanus,  St.  Anselm,  St.  Bernard  and  most  medlaival 
writers.  In  these  we  find  the  most  beautiful  passages  of  this 
mystic  song  directly  applied  to  the  most  holy  Virgin.  She  is 
the  "  Flower  of  the  Field,"  and  "  the  Lily  of  the  Valley."  She 
it  is,  of  whom  it  is  said,  "  Behold  thou  art  fair,  O  my  love, 
behold  thou  art  fair."  It  is  Mary  whom  the  beloved  calls  to 
"  Arise,  make  haste,  my  love,  my  dove,  my  beautiful  one,  and 
come."  It  is  Mary  whose  magnificence  and  whose  sanctity  dif- 
fuses, as  it  were,  a  fragrance  of  the  sweetest  savor  over  the 
whole  world.  "  Who  is  she  that  goeth  up  by  the  desert  as  a 
pillar  of  smoke,  of  aromatic  spices,  of  myrrh,  and  frankincense, 
and  of  all  the  powder  of  the  perfumer  i"  It  is  her  beauty 
which  enraptures  the  beloved,  and  constrains  him  to  exclaim. 
"  How  beautiful  art  thou,  my  love,  how  beautiful  art  thou ! " 
"  Thou  art  all  fair,  O  my  love ;  and  there  is  no  stain  in  thee." 
"Who  is  she  that  cometh  forth  as  the  morning  rising,  fair  as 
the  moon,  bright  as  the  sun,  terrible  as  an  army  in  battle 
array  5 

In  addition  to  the  Song  of  Solomon,  the  Church  has  accom- 
modated to  the  Blessed  Mother  other  portions  of  the  sacred 
volume,  and  in  particulai"  different  passages  from  the  Books  of 
Proverbs,  Wisdom,  an<l  Ecclesiasticus,  besides  several  of  the 
Psalms  of  David.     These  passages  are  familiar  to  all  who  are 


A  KicjoixDER.  275 

acquainted  with  the  offices  of  tlie  Blessed  Virgin  in  the  Rouuiii 
Breviary,  and  witli  the  Lessons  appointed  to  be  read  in  them 
upon  tlie  principal  Festivals.  They  are  to  be  found  chietl^'  in 
tl'.e  8th  chapter  of  Proverbs,  the  24th  chapter  of  Ecclesiasticus, 
and  the  1st  and  4th  chapters  of  Wisdom. 

I  have  space  but  for  that  very  beautiful  application  to  Mary 
of  the  24th  chapter  of  Ecclesiasticus.     Wisdom  there  says  of 

herself:  "  I  came  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  Most  High 

Then  the  Creator  of  all  things  commanded,  and  said  to  me, 
and  lie  that  made  me  rested  in  my  tabernacle.  And  He  said 
to  me,  let  Thy  dwelling  be  in  Jacob,  and  thy  inheritance  in 
Israel,  and  take  root  in  my  elect And  so  was  I  estab- 
lished in  Sion,  and  in  the  holy  city  likewise  I  rested,  and  my 
poM-er  was  in  Jerusalem.  And  I  took  root  in  an  honorable 
people,  and  in  the  portion  of  my  God  His  inheritance,  and  my 
abode  is  in  the  full  assembly  of  the  Saints.  I  was  exalted  like 
a  cedar  in  Libanus,  and  as  a  cypress  tree  on  Mount  Sion.  I 
was  exalted  like  a  palm  tree  in  Cades,  and  as  a  rose  plant  in 
Jericho.     As  a  fair  olive  tree  in  the  plains,  and  as  a  plane  tree 

by  the  water  in  the  streets,  was  I  exalted As  the  vine  I 

have  brought  forth  a  pleasant  odor,  and  my  flowers  are  the 

fruit  of  honor  and  riches In  me  is  all  grace  of  the  way 

and  of  the  truth  ;  in  me  is  all  hope  of  life  and  of  virtue.  Come 
over  to  me  all  ye  that  desire  me,  and  be  filled  with  my  fruits. 
For  my  spirit  is  sweet  above  honey,  and  my  inheritance  aljove 
honey  and  the  honeycomb."  This  sublime  description  of 
Wisdom  is  accommodated  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  in  all  the 
Offices  used  on  her  Festivals  throughout  the  Latin  church.  It 
is  besides  applied  to  her  by  many  Fathers  and  commentators  of 
antiquity,  and  among  them  by  St.  Germanus,  St.  Ej)hrem,  St. 
Proclus,  St.  John  of  Damascene,  Tarasius  of  Constantinople, 
Modestus  of  Jerusalem,  St.  Ansehn,  St.  Ildephousus,  St.  Peter 
Damian,  and  a  host  of  others.  These  writers  either  directly 
apply  the  very  words  of  Ecclesiasticus  to  Mary,  or  else  they 
select  different  types  and  emblems  from  this  chapter,  and  use 
them  to  express  their  conception  of  her  greatness.  And  it  is 
evident  that  the  fitness  of  these  most  remarkable  accommoda- 
tions depends  altogether  upon  the  existence  of  a  certain  analogy 


276  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

between  \visdom  itself  and  the  prerogatives  of  the  Mother  of 
God.  But  Pusey  confesses  that  the  Holy  Virgin  is  one  who 
approaches  as  near  as  a  created  being  can  posblbly  approach  to 
the  Scriptural  portrait  of  Wisdom  given  above.  Hence  we 
are  bound  to  admit  that  in  the  judgment  of  the  Church  and 
of  her  ancient  writers  accommodating  these  portions  of  Script- 
ure to  Mary,  there  is  no  creature,  whether  angel  or  man,  whom 
she  does  not  wholly  surpass  in  dignity,  in  grace,  in  imiocency, 
and  in  glory.  For  she  it  is  who  is  the  Queen  of  Sion  and 
Jerusalem,  that  is  of  the  Church  militant  and  the  Church  tri- 
umphant. She  it  is  in  whose  sacred  tabernacle  her  Creator 
designated  to  rest.  She  it  is  whom  the  unanimous  voice  of 
the  Church  commemorates  as  alone  holy  amidst  the  daughters 
of  men,  alone  worthy  that  God  should  rest  within  her  sacred 
body,  the  Lily  among  the  thorns,  the  Olive  ever  verdant,  and 
the  Morning  Star,  shining  with  a  brilliant  light  upon  the 
world,  and  by  the  very  splendor  of  its  brilliancy  manifesting 
itself  as  most  innnacuhite  and  most  innocent.  Moreover,  it  is 
Mary  into  whose  bosom  the  Divine  bounty  has  poured  all  the 
treasures  of  Heaven.  It  is  she  who  stands  forth  amid  angels 
and  men,  exalted  far  above  all,  "•  like  a  cedar  in  Libanus,  and 
as  the  cypress  trees  on  Mount  Sion."  She,  as  the  instrument 
of  the  Incarnation,  is  the  instrument  of  Salvation,  so  that 
through  her  and  in  her  all  things  are  renewed,  life  repaired, 
the  power  of  death  destroyed,  the  graces  of  Heaven  con- 
veyed to  man.  Heaven  itself  opened,  and  man  united  witli 
Christ  his  God  and  Saviour.  She  v.'as  united  with  Jesus  in 
nature,  because  she  was  consubstantial  with  Him,  and  in 
innocency  of  life  because  she  was  ever  pleasing  to  God.  In 
all  this  Pusey  would  agree ;  for  it  is  the  great  lesson  in  re- 
gard to  Mary,  which  the  Christian  Fathers,  Doctors,  and  Saints 
are  ever  urging  in  their  hymns,  panegyrics,  and  discourses.  It 
is  the  idea  of  the  Blessed  Mother  of  Jesus  brought  jut  and  cast 
into  shape  by  such  teaching  as  this,  which  they  attempted  to 
illustrate  by  the  accommodation  of  this  wonderful  chapter  of 
Ecclesiasticus.  And  it  is  impossible  to  ignore  the  judgment 
of  the  church  and  of  her  Doctors,  that  there  really  does  exist  a 
true  analogy  between   the  wisdom  of  God  and  his  lovely 


A  Rejoindek.  2T7 

mother,  an  analogy  which  cannot  be  supposed  for  a  moment 
unless  Mary  bo  acknowledged  to  be  the  most  pure,  the  most 
holy,  the  most  beautiful,  and  the  most  perfect  among  the  crea- 
tures of  God. 

Who,  I  ask,  can  see  in  this  any  attempt  to  bridge  (.  jv  that 
impassable  distance  which  separates  the  measure  of  Mary's 
glory  from  that  of  Jesus  ?  Any  attempt  to  hide  out  of  sight 
tliat  unparalleled  eminence  of  the  God-Man,  which  it  is  her  hfe 
in  Heaven  to  adore,  to  love  and  to  praise  'i  Surely  oidy  one  of 
a  sect  that  "preserves  her  balance  ....  and  observes  four 
feasts  yearly  in  honor  of  the  Holy  Mother,"  but  in  not  one  of 
tchich  is  her  hlessed  name  even  so  tnuch  as  Tne^itioned !  Is 
spiritual  stupidity  and  imbecility  so  withering  as  to  dry  up  and 
scorch  all  the  natural  instincts  of  the  human  heart  in  presence 
of  all  th.at  is  pure,  and  good,  and  lovely,  and  tender,  and  holy  i 

I  liave  now  considered  in  a  way,  I  trust,  satisfactory  to  all 
candid  readers,  all  those  general  propositions,  so  to  speak, 
against  which,  on  the  score  of  language  alone,  the  Vicar  has 
most  severely  though  only  parasitically  inveighed.  In  my 
next  I  will  face  severally  every  one  of  tliose  individual  passages 
textually  quoted  by  him  from  "  Liguori's  Glories  of  Mary," 
the  "Raccolta"  and  Pusey.  I  invite  the  earnest  attention  of 
Protestant  religious  teachers  to  my  explanations. 


LETTER  XXIII. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   EEJOINDEE. 

To  iJw  Editor  of  the  Globe: 

Sir, — To  thoughtful  minds  and  honest  hearts  it  will  appear 
a  truism  to  say,  that  there  must  be  an  enormous  difference 
between  any  comprehension  of  the  Catholic  Church  and  her 
life  which  can  be  obtained  by  outsiders,  and  the  results  of  ex- 
perience on  those  who  have  lived  in  church  membership.  This 
difference  has  been  aptly  compared,  by  the  great  Cardinal 
Wiseman,  to  looking  at  a  beautiful  stained-glass  window  from 


278  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

loithorit  and  froyn  within  tlie  building  it  adorns.  This  strik- 
ing illustration  is  especially  to  the  point  in  the  matter  now  in 
hand.  Mj  opponent  has  never  experienced,  or  come  near  to 
exi)eriencing-,  the  state  of  mind  engendered  by  a  constant  and 
loving  devotion  to  the  Blessed  Mother  of  Jesus;  and 
yet  he  confidently,  with  characteristic  impudence  and  inso- 
lence, pits  his  a  priori  augury  of  what  that  state  of  mind  mu^^t 
be,  against  the  unanimous  testimony  of  those  who  hnow  that 
phenomenon  on  which  he  descants  in  ignorance,  at  once  debas- 
ing and  soul-dishonoring.  When,  for  instance,  he  and  others 
like  him  tell  a  Catholic,  on  purely  a  priori  grounds,  that  his 
daily,  yea  hourly,  Avet  to  Mary  lessen  his  simple  trust  in  Jesus, 
such  a  statement  can  o  dy  elicit  from  liim  amazement  and  pity  ; 
because  the  Catholic  hioivs,  as  a  matter  most  strictly  within 
his  own  immediate  experience,  that  devotion  to  her  is  in  no 
respect  inconsistent  with  the  most  jealously  exclusive  devotion 
of  heart  to  God  and  to  Christ ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  the 
love  of  the  Mother  is  among  his  most  efficacious  helps  for 
growing  in  the  knowledge  and  the  love  of  the  Son,  that  it  in- 
definitely intensifies  that  love,  and  gives  to  it  an  otherwise 
untasted  quality  of  tenderness  and  passionate  affection.  All 
the  Vicar's  absurd  and  groundless  olgeetions  and  difficulties 
are  solved  by  the  difference  of  being  without  and  wit/ii?). 
The  wild  and  absolutely  imaginary  picture  he  draws  of  us 
vanishes  into  thin  air,  together  with  the  sophisms  which  he  so 
]ierversely  constructs,  or  rather  borrows  from  Pusey's  Jirst 
volume. 

I  ask  your  readers  to  bear  in  mind  that  Pusey  admits  the 
Catholic  doctrine  on  the  Intercession  and  Invocation  of  the 
Saints.  For,  he  says:  (The  Blessed  Virgin,)  "  with  all  the  in- 
habitants of  heaven,  and  she  more  eminently  than  all,  does 
pray  for  us.  The  intercession  of  the  saints,  departed  and  at 
rest,  for  iifi,  who  are  still  militant,  is  part  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Communion  of  Saints,  and  would  be  a  necessary  consequence 
of  God-given  love,  even  if  it  did  not  appear  from  Holy  Script- 
Tire.  The  contrary  is  inconceivable."  He  also  heartily  ac- 
cepts the  teaching  of  the  illustrious  Bishop  Milner  on  the 
permissibility  of  invoking  Mary  in  particular,  because  he  says 


A  Hejoindek.  279 

"  tliiit  she  is  far  more  exulted  and  acceptable  to  God."  Hero 
is  tlie  fullest  admissiuii,  by  my  opponent's  own  witness  of  all 
the  Catholic  principles  retpiired  by  your  readers  in  this  con- 
nection.    Their  application  will  appear  as  I  proceed. 

In  treating  of  the  subject  in  hand,  in  the  Jirst  volume  of 
the  Etrcnicun,  Fusey  has  chosen  among  C!atholic  writers  those 
wlio  are  most  enthusiastic  about  the  lilessed  Virgin,  and  from 
these  writers  he  picks  out  the  strongest  passages  he  can  Hu'l. 
Ilavinj;  thus  collected  his  materials  he  then  so  combines  them 
that  his  readers  will  be  led  to  think  they  have  before  them  a 
complete  representation,  as  if  in  a  ]ianorania,  of  what  Catholics 
think  and  say  about  the  Mother  of  God.  The  result  is  a  cari- 
cature. No  one  can  honestly  believe  that  a  mnnber  of  expres- 
sions selected  after  this  fashion  separated  from  the  context,  and 
skilfully  dovetailed  together,  will  fairly  represent  the  general 
tone  and  character  of  Catholic  sentiment  and  Catholic  devotion. 
Nay,  more,  this  is  not  a  fair  representation  of  the  sentiment 
and  devotion  even  of  those  writers  from  whom  the  passages  are 
quoted.  Surely  the  sense  of  a  writer  upon  any  subject, 
and  more  particularly  on  a  subject  in  which  his  affec- 
tions are  deeply  engaged,  is  not  to  be  judged  by  a  few 
phrases,  often  highly  rhetorical,  often  highly  figurative, 
picked  out  from  the  context,  and  served  up  cold  iuid  dry 
for  the  reader.  On  this  matter  Father  Newman  renuu-ks 
to  Fusey :  "  I  think  you  have  not  always  made  your  (piota- 
tions  with  that  consideration  and  kindness  which  is  your  rule." 
He  thus  calndy  complains  of  the  unfairness — of  which  Fusey 
is  habitually  guilty  in  Xmjird  volume — of  taking  a  strong  and 
apparently  objectionable  passage  from  an  author  who,  either 
in  the  immediate  context  or  elsewhere,  has  qualified  it  by 
other  statements,  which  any  one  but  a  partisan  writer  would 
feel  bound  to  take  into  consideration  and  place  by  its  side, 
without  giving  the  reader  any  intimation  that  such  qualifica- 
tions exist.  He  asks  Fusey  very  pointedly  whether  he  thinks 
'*  this  a  fair  and  becoming  method  of  reasoning  .  ...  or  the 
procedure  of  a  theologian  "  ?  The  Vicar  is  beyond  tlie  reach  of 
such  an  appeal.  He  simply  out-Herod's  IngersoU  in  coarse 
malignity  and  dishonesty.    The  greatest  author  he  quotes  from 


2S0  Ii'sE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

is  St.  Lijjjuori  in  the  "  Glories  of  Mary."  Speaking  of  this 
book  Father  Newman  says :  "  It  never  surprises  nie  to  read 
anything  extraordinary  in  the  devotions  of  a  sjiint  Such  men 
are  on  a  level  very  different  from  our  own,  and  we  cannot  un- 
derstand them.  I  hold  this  to  be  an  important  canon  in  the 
Lives  of  the  Saints,  according  to  the  words  of  the  Apostle, 
'  The  spiritual  man  judges  all  things,  and  he  himself  is  judged 
of  no  one.'  But  we  may  refrain  from  judging,  without  pro- 
ceeding to  imitate."  The  Vicar,  however,  armed  with  his 
"  yard  stick,"  is  ready  to  pronounce  judgment  even  on  "  the 
spiritual  man,"  and  the  less  he  knows  of  the  subject  the  more 
peremptory  he  becomes.  No  words,  for  instance,  seem  suffi- 
ciently strong  to  express  his  estimate  of  the  "  Glories  of  Mary  " 
— that  inexhaustible  mine  of  the  most  tender  and  beautiful 
sentiments  in  regard  to  the  Mother  of  Jesus.  He  says  that 
the  "  whole  book  ....  raises  not  a  dispute  as  to  what  sort  of 
worship  (Latreia,  donleia,  hyperdonloia,  &c.)  ought  to  be  ren- 
dered to  the  Virgin,  but  the  all-important  question,  '  What 
must  I  do  to  be  saved  ? '  The  practical  answer  to  Romanists 
from  Ligiiori  and  his  followers  is  '  Go  to  Mary  and  you  will  be 
saved.'  From  our  Blessed  Lord  and  Master  it  is  '  come  unto 
me.'"  Wliat  unclean  spirit  could  suggest  a  more  audacious 
libel  than  this  both  on  St.  Liguori  and  on  the  Church  of  God  ? 
Now,  though  St.  Liguori's  book  is  written  for  Catholics  who 
cannot  misunderstand  him,  yet  he  lays  down  their  principles  in 
the  clearest  way  as  if  he  had  in  his  mind  the  Vicar  and  his 
"  ilk."  Thus,  in  his  address  "  To  the  Reader  "  of  the  "  Glories 
of  Mary  "  he  siiys :  "  In  order  that  my  present  work  may  not 
be  condemned  by  the  over-critical,  I  think  it  well  to  explain 
certain  propositions  that  will  be  found  in  it,  and  which  may 
seem  hazaixlous,  or  perhaps  obscure.  I  have  noticed  some,  and 
should  others  attract  your  attention,  charitable  reader,  /  heij 
that  yoxi  xoUl  xmderstand  them,  according  to  the  rules  of  sound 
theoloijy  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Iloman  Catholic  Church 

of  which  I  declare  myself  a  most  obedient  son And 

now  to  say  an  in  a  few  words:  God,  to  glorify  the  mother  of 
the  Redeemer,  has  so  determined  and  disposed  that  of  her 
great  charity  she  should  intercede  in  behalf  of  all  those  for 


A  Rejoindeu.  281 

whom  His  Divine  Son  paid  and  oflfered  the  superabundant 
price  of  11  is  precious  Blood  in  which  alone  is  our  salvation^ 
life,  and  resurrection.  On  this  doctrine,  and  on  all  that  is  in 
accordance  with  it,  I  ground  my  projH)sitions — propositions 
which  the  saints  have  not  feared  to  assert  in  their  tender  col- 
loquies with  Mary  and  fervent  discourses  in  her  honor." 
'  Pnsey  accepts  every  word  of  the  "  doctrine  "  here  laid  down 
hy  St.  Li^nori.  The  saint  then  refers  his  "  reader  "  to  chapters 
the  sixth,  seventh,  eighth,  and  ninth  of  his  book  for  the  appli- 
cation of  his  "  doctrine."  From  one  of  these  chapters  (the 
eighth),  the  Vicar  has  taken  what  he  calls  the  "  l)ald  concentra- 
tion of  the  teaching  of  the  whole  book,"  and  then,  in  the  very 
face  of  the  author's  statement,  just  quoted,  utters  the  base, 
ssitanic  libel  already  mentioned.  And  he  desires  to  ])ose  as  a 
"true  Catholic"  and  a  "priest"  !  Then  again,  the  simplicity 
is  almost  affecting  with  which  St.  Liguori  elsewhere  expresses 
himself  on  figurative  and  rhetorical  language  in  devotion  to 
Mary.  "  Without  doubt,"  he  says,  "  hyperbole,  under  which 
name  tropes  (figures)  are  included,  cannot  be  taxed  with  untruth 
when  it  is  evident  from  the  context  that  it  goes  beyond  the 
truth — as  is  the  case  when  St.  Peter  Damian  savs  that  "  Marv 
does  not  pray,  but  commands."  The  same  applies  to  St. 
Anselm,  when  he  says  that  "  She  weeps  in  Heaven  for  those 
who  offend  God."  In  such  cases  as  these,  in  which  there  can 
be  no  ntistake,  tropes  (figures)  are  lawful.  But  such  is  not  the 
case  in  propositions  in  which  the  hyperbole  is  not  evident,  and 
there  would  be  a  real  deception."  The  "Glories  of  Mary" 
is  full  of  devout  contemplations  and  pious  amplifications  and 
figurative  expressions.  Wliat  canon  for  the  interpretation  of 
these  could  be  more  clear,  and  simpler,  than  that  su])plied  by 
the  author?  What  more  could  St.  Liguori  do  than  he  has 
done  in  these  extracts  to  guard  against  such  perverse  and 
malicious  misrepresentations  as  I  am  now  considering  i  I  leave 
it  to  candid  Protestants  to  answer. 

One  more  preliminary  reflection.  The  same  line  of  thought 
which  vindicates  agjiinst  Unitarians  and  Deists  the  worship  of 
Jesus,  vindicates  no  less  triumphantly  against  Anglicans  and 
Ritualists  the  Catholic  veneration  of  M>>ry.     Let  us  sujipose 


282  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ii-slm. 

the  Vicar  in  controversey  with  a  reh'giously-rainded  Unitarian, 
who  labors  under  a  blind  and  ignorant  prejudice  against  the 
doctrine  of  the  Incarnation,  similar  to  that  which  possesses  the 
Vicar  against  our  doctrine  and  practice.  The  Unitarian  (I  have 
often  heard  him)  would  express  his  objections  to  the  Incarniv- 
tion  in  some  such  terms  as  these : 

"  Men  were  created  for  one  end — the  knowledge  and  love  of 
God.  They  better  fuldll  that  end,  therefore, — they  are  more 
perfect  of  their  kind, — in  proportion  as  they  more  constantl" 
keep  the  thought  of  God  before  them  ;  contemplate  His  ex- 
cellences ;  labor  to  fulfill  Ilis  conunands.  Kow  this  sad  doc- 
trine of  the  Incarnation  presents  one  constant  'mpediment  in 
the  way  of  man's  great  work.  When  we  Unitarians  are  op- 
pressed with  trial,  temptation,  suffering,  we  stinmlate  our  con- 
fidence in  the  Almighty  Creator  by  steadily  fixing  our  thoughts 
on  His  Infinite  Mercy  and  Ilis  Infinite  Power.  But  you  Trini- 
tarians, I  have  often  observed,  shrink  from  this ;  it  is  not  once 
in  a  thousand  times  that  your  pious  affections  take  any  such  turn. 
JS^o ;  you  fix  your  thoughts  not  on  the  Infinite  Love  which  is  en- 
tertained for  you  by  God  ;  but  on  the  finite  love  which  (as  you 
think)  is  entertained  for  you  by  that  created  soul,  which  you 
believe  God  to  have  assumed,  in  the  form  of  Christ ;  and  you  pon- 
der according!}'  on  the  various  most  touching  circumstances  of 
Cljrist's  Life  and  Passion.  Yet  even  if  I  were  to  grant  your 
full  doctrine,  it  would  still  remain  true  that  the  love  felt  for 
you  by  the  soul  which  so  suffei-ed  is  but  a  finite  love.  And 
further,  since  no  one  finite  object  is  nearer  than  any  other  to 
the  Infinite,  it  is  true,  in  the  strictest  and  most  literal  sense, 
that  the  love  felt  for  you  by  the  Divine  Nature  as  far  exceeds 
the  love  felt  for  you  by  the  soul  of  Christ,  as  it  exceeds  the 
love  you  feel  for  each  other. 

"  Then,  again,  we  Unitarians  preserve  untouched  that  most 
sacred  truth,  which  your  own  Scriptures  so  prominently  testify 
— that  God  alone  can  read  the  heart ;  whereas  you  Trinitarians 
.idmit  the  soul  of  Christ  iato  a  participation  of  that  incommu- 
nicable privilege,  and  thereby  invest  a  finite  object  with  the 
very  attributes  of  Infinity.  Or,  again,  suppose  I  would  rouse 
myself  to  repentance  for  sin :  I  reflect  on  God's  Infinite  Sane- 


A  Rbioindick.  283 

tity — on  the  disloyal  insult  which  I  have  offered  to  that  Sanc- 
tity, and  on  the  foul  contrast  between  God,  the  great  Exem- 
plai*,  and  myself.  Now  I  will  not  say  that  you  Trinitarians 
never  do  this  ;  but  I  will  confidently  say  that  you  far  of tener 
do  something  else.  You  dwell  on  the  anguish  which  you  con- 
sider your  sin  to  have  inflicted  on  the  loving  Heart  of  your 
Redeemer ;  or  on  the  contrast  between  your  sin  and  Christ's 
spotless  sjuictity  on  earth,  that  is,  the  spotless  sanctity  of  a 
created  soul ;  or  on  your  ingratitude  for  the  torments  endured 
by  that  soul  on  your  behalf;  and  then  you  gaze  with  com- 
punction on  the  pierced  hands  and  feet.  In  fact,  you  carry 
this  idolatrous  principle  into  every  detail  of  the  interior  life. 
You  do  not  come  face  to  face  with  God ;  what  you  cjII  the 
Sacred  llunumity  (of  Christ)  stands  up  as  a  constant  b;\rrler 
between  Ilim  and  your  soul.  Indeed,  I  must  say  that  your 
Trinitarian  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  has  fearfully  encouraged 
sin,  by  representing  pardon  for  the  most  frightful  offences  as 
so  certain  and  so  easily  obtained. 

"  I  do  not  here  speak, '  the  Unitarian  may  continue  to  say, 
in  closer  parody  of  Pusey's  assault  on  our  devotion,  "  I  do  not 
here  speak  of  saintly  men,  but  of  the  great  mass  as  we  find 
them  ;  of  those  who  fulfill  their  religious  duties  in  a  quiet  and 
ordinary  way.  These  men  give  a  certain  fixed  portion  of  each 
day  to  prayer;  and  it  is  arithmetically  evident  that  if  some  of 
that  portion  goes  to  the  created  soul  of  Christ,  so  much  less 
will  be  left  for  the  Infinite  God.  But  this  is  far  from  the 
M'orst.  It  is  qn\te  indefinitely  easier  and  more  pleasant  to  man 
as  he  is,  that  he  shall  contemplate  a  created  object — especially 
one  invested  with  the  singularly  pathetic  and  imaginative 
interest  surrounding  Christ's  Life  .aid  Passion — than  that  he 
shall  contemplate  the  Divine  Nature.  If  men  are  told,  there- 
fore, that  Christ's  human  soul  knows  their  thoughts  and  can 
grant  their  petitions,  they  will  be  ever  increasing  the  time  de- 
voted to  that  soul,  at  the  expense  of  the  time  devoted  directly 
to  the  uncreated.  They  will  thus  learn  practically  more  and 
more  to  look  to  the  created  soul  of  Christ  for  pardon,  for  help, 
for  strength,  for  consolation :  it  is  their  prayers  to  that  soul 
which  will    issue  freely  and  warmly  from  the  heart ;  while 


284:  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

their  direct  addresses  to  the  Divine  Nature  will  be  little  more 
than  the  perfimctory  and  external  performances  of  a  certain 
stated  and  pre8cril>ed  routine. 

"  Now  can  you  justly  ar^ue,"  the  Unitarian  continues,  "  in 
reply  to  all  this,  that  you  regard  the  soul  of  Christ  as  apper- 
taining to  a  Divine  Person,  and  that  your  prayers  to  that  soul 
are  addressed  to  God  the  Son.  I  do  not  deny  that  such  is 
your  theory  I  the  simpleyat'^  is  this:  For  once  that  your  pious 
aflfections  are  directed  to  the  Eternal  Father,  they  are  directed 
a  thousand  times  to  the  Sacred  Humanity  (of  Christ).  You 
Trinitarians  must  perforce,  therefore,  admit  one  of  two  alter- 
natives, and  I  care  not  which.  Either  you  love  the  Second 
Person  of  your  Trinity  far  better  than  you  love  the  First ;  or 
else  you  love  the  created  soul  far  better  than  you  love  the 
Divine  Person.  In  either  case  your  doctrines  of  the  Trinity 
and  Incarnatioi  have  introduced  a  shocking  and  most  pei'verse 
corruption  iiito  your  practical  worshij)." 

Under  tne  pressure  of  such  arguments  from  his  Unitarian 
opponent,  I  think  that  the  Vicar  would  be  disposed  to  wring 
liis  hands  in  perplexity — at  least  I  hope  so.  Great  would  be  his 
distress  to  iind  that  men  can  argue  with  such  perverse  ingenu- 
ity, on  grounds  purely  a  jmori,  in  favor  of  a  proposition 
])roved  to  be  monstrously  and  extravagantly  false  by  the  daily 
experience  of  every  Trinitarian.  In  fact,  he  would  have  a 
practical  perception  of  the  effect  which  is  produced  on  the 
mind  of  Catholics  by  his  own  confused  "  re-hash  "  of  Pusey's 
criticism  of  our  devotion  to  the  Mother  of  Jesus.  I  mean  to 
say  that  Pusey's  argument  against  us,  in  his  first  volume,  iin- 
manglcd  by  the  Vicar,  is  paralleled  in  every  essential  })articular 
by  the  above  Unit^irian  argument  against  the  Incarnation  and 
Divinity  of  Christ.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  so  discourteous  to  the 
Vicar  as  to  wound  his  vanity  and  love  of  notoriety,  by  losing 
eight  of  him  altogetlier ;  but  he  will  excuse  me  if  I  prefer 
original  sources  because  he  appreciates  a  taste  for  "  verifica- 
tion." Let  me  then  tell  your  readers  that  the  pith  and  mar- 
row of  Pusey's  argument,  as  spread  out  in  the  ^rst  volume  of 
tlu^  T^'rrf'rf^f,  ur.iy  };c  thus  Gxprossed :  "  Love  of  God  and  of 
Jesus  is  the  highest  of  spiritual  perfections.    But  the  constant 


A  lii:.ioiNnKR.  285 

thouglit  of  Mary  by  practical  and  devout  Catliolics  is  greatly 
prejudicial  to  this  love,  by  drawing  men's  minds  from  the  Cre- 
ator to  the  creature ;  and  a  proof  of  this  is,  that  when  a  pious 
Catholic  is  in  trouble,  he  far  more  spontaneously  turns  to 
Mary  than  to  her  Divine  Son  and  his  Kedeenjer."  Now  the 
Unitarian  argument  against  belief  in  the  Incarnation  is  strik- 
ingly analogous  as  your  readers  will  admit.  Here  it  is  again 
in  summary:  "Love  of  God,  for  the  sake  of  His  Divine  Ex- 
cellencies, is  the  highest  of  spiritual  perfections.  But  the  con- 
stant thought  of  Christ  by  practical  and  devout  Trinitarians  is 
greatly  prejudicial  to  this  perfection,  as  leading  men  to  love 
God,  not  for  the  sake  of  His  necessjiry  Divine  Excellencies, 
but  for  the  sake  of  those  liuman  excellencies  which  (according 
to  Trinitarian  doctrine)  He  has  freely  assumed.  And  a  proof 
of  this  is,  that  a  pious  Trinitarian,  when  in  trouble,  very  far 
more  spontaneously  turns  to  the  Second  Person  than  to  the 
First.  The  Z>/t'/;ie^  Excellencies  appertain  to  BotJi ;  if,  there- 
fore, it  were  for  them  that  he  loved  God,  the  Father  would  be 
quite  as  frequently  in  his  thoixghts  as  the  Son."  If  I  had  the 
space  I  could  easily  draw  out  the  overwhelming  Trinitarian 
answer  to  this,  but  it  is  not  necessary.  Undoubtedly  every 
devout  l)eliever  in  the  Divinity  of  Clirist  Hees  and  hnows  that 
the  Unitarian  argument  is  monstrously  fallacious;  and  in  like 
manner,  every  devout  Catholic  see%  and  knows  that  Pusey's 
argument  is  monstrously  fallacious — but,  it  goes  without  say- 
ing, and  your  logical  readers  must  concede,  that  the  one  is  just 
as  plausible  as  the  other. 

I  come  at  last  to  the  Vicar's  textual  quotations,  made  as  well 
in  his  very  first  letter,  from  St.  Liguori  and  the  JRdccolta,  as 
in  his  lust  through  Pusey  from  other  sources.  I  will  consider 
i\\Qm,  every  one.  Nay,  more;  I  will  give  him  what  he  likes 
so  much — "a  wider  view  "and  "useful  information;"  for  I 
propose  so  far  as  my  limits  will  allow  to  consider  and  explain 
for  honest  Protestants  all  those  passages  in  I^usey,  from  what- 
ever source,  which  I  think  present  the  greatest  difficulty  to  a 
Protestant  mind.  Perhaps  the  "bitter  regrets,"  which  the 
Vicar  prophesied  for  me.  mav.  like  the  proverbial  chickens, 
"  come  home  to  roost." 


286  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ii'scm. 

1.  I  will  consider  first  the  statement  {E!re)itmn,  p.  105)  that 
Mary  ''Appeases  her  Son's  wrath" — whence  Pnsey  infers  that, 
according  to  Catholic  writers,  "the  ssiints  are  more  ready  to 
intercede  with  Jcsns  than  Jesus  with  the  Father";  or  (in  other 
words)  that  Mary  loves  sinners  more  warmly  than  Jesus  loves 
them.  This  objection  occupies  the  Vicar  in  the  sixth  last  par- 
a<rraph  of  his  closing  "  Stricture."  Now  here,  as  in  so  many 
other  instances,  the  parallel  of  the  Incarnation  is  precisely  in 
])oint.  The  Vicar  has  heard  many  Anglican  preachers  say 
that  "  tlie  Father  is  justly  irritated,"  and  that  "  the  Son  ajv 
peases  Ills  wrath."  Docs  he,  therefore,  Jiscribe  to  them  the 
portentous  heresy,  that  sinners  are  loved  with  less  intensity  hy 
the  Divine  Nature  than  by  the  soul,  or  Sacred  Humanity  of 
Christ?  The  Incarnation  displays  no  less  tndy  the  Father's 
loving  kindness  than  the  Son's.  "  God  so  loved  the  world  that 
He  gave  His  only  begotten  Son."  "  God  commends  His  Love, 
in  that  Christ  died  for  us";  and  any  ditferent  doctrine  belongs 
only  to  a  Calvinistic  heretic.  And  yet  it  is  said  with  a  most 
true  drift,  in  practical  and  devotional  writing,  that  the  Son 
a])pease8  the  Father's  wrath,  and  the  like ;  because  such 
phrases  are  understood  to  signify  what  is  most  true — viz.,  that  in 
consequence  of  the  Incarnation,  the  Father  forgives  lis  our 
sins,  and  treats  us  with  innneasnrably  greater  mercy  than  would 
otherwise  have  been  the  case.  It  is  most  certain,  indeed,  that 
the  love  felt  for  men  by  the  Father  is  infinitely  greater  than 
that  felt  for  them  by  the  soul  of  Christ ;  and  in  like  manner 
that  the  love  felt  for  them  by  the  soul  of  Christ  is  very  far 
greater  even  than  that  felt  for  them  by  their  Heavenly  Mother. 
Still  it  is  axiomatically  evident  that,  if  Mary's  intercession  has 
any  efficacy  at  all  (which  Pnsey  himself  asserts),  it  must  induce 
her  Divine  Son  to  treat  men  more  mercifully  than  would 
otherwise  have  been  the  case ;  and  therefore,  just  as  it  is  very 
suitably  said  that  the  Son  appeases  the  Father's  wrath,  so  it  is 
said  with  precisely  equal  propriety  that  Mary  ap]ieases  her 
Son's. 

Under  this  head  comes  the  famous  "  Vision  of  the  two  lad- 
ders," from  the  "  Glories  of  Mary,"  over  which  my  unhaj)py 
^pponon^  flaps  Lis  Icuucu  wiiigs.     Yuur  reaciers  can  turn  to  it. 


A  Rejoindeu.  287 

Let  UP  Hiipposc  some  Anglican  poet  to  depict  "  a  vision  toucli- 
ijig  tlie  two  ladders  that  reached  from  earth  to  heaven  :  the 
one  red,  upon  whieli  the  Eternal  Father  leaned,  from  which 
numy  fell  backward  and  could  not  ascend  ;  the  other  white, 
upon  which  the  Sacred  Humanity  leaned,  the  help  whereof, 
such  as  used,  were  by  Jesus  received  with  a  cheerfid  counte- 
nance, and  30  with  facility  ascQiided  into  heaven."  The  only 
unfavorable  comment  on  this  I  would  expect  from  the  V^icar 
would  be  that,  in  saying  '''•many  fell  backward"  from  the 
former  hu.der,  the  poet  rmplied  the  existence  of  some  who  did 
not  fall  backward  from  it.  Otherwise  he  would  heartily  ap- 
j)laud  such  a  poem  as  teaching  the  all-important  truth,  that 
Jesus  is  the  one  appointed  Way  of  coming  to  the  Father,  and 
that  those  who  attempt  to  reach  the  Father  without  that  media- 
ticm  will  be  disappointed.  Such,  then,  is  exactly  the  meaning 
of  St  Liguori,  and  of  those  saintly  writers  who  have  a]>iiealed 
to  this  vision.  They  teach  that,  to  a  Catholic,  the  Mother  of 
Jesus  is  immeasurably  the  surest  way  of  reaching  Jesus;  that 
those  Catholics  who  neglect  her  regular  and  habitual  invoca- 
tion will  find  it  much  more  difficult  to  obtain  their  saiictitica- 
tion  and  ultimate  salvation.  Why  ?  Because  of  the  might  of 
her  intercessory  power,  so  graphically  ilhistrated  by  this  figure 
of  the  two  ladders.  For,  as  Cardinal  Newman  puts  it :  "  If 
'God  heareth  not  sinners,  but  if  a  man  be  a  worshipper  of 
Ilim  and  do  Ilis  will,  him  lie  heareth';  'if  the  continual 
prayer  of  a  just  man  availetli  nnich ;  if  faithful  Abraham  was 
required  to  pray  for  Abimelech,  for  he  was  a  prophet ';  if 
patient  Job  was  to  '  pray  for  his  friends,'  for  he  had  '  spoken 
right  to  things  about  God';  if  meek  Moses,  by  lifting  up  his 
hands,  turned  the  battle  in  favor  of  Israel,  against  Ainaiek  ;  why 
should  we  wonder  at  hearing  that  Mary,  the  only  spotless  child 
of  Adam's  seed,  has  a  transcendent  influence  with  the  God  of 
grace?  And  if  the  Gentiles  at  Jerusalem  sought  Pinlip,  be- 
cause he  was  an  apostle,  when  they  desired  access  to  Jesus,  and 
Philip  spoke  to  Andrew,  as  still  more  -closely  in  our  Lord's 
confidence,  and  then  both  came  to  Him,  is  it  strange  that  the 

ir»r»tlir>r  kIioiiIH  Imvn  nmrpr  wi^li  tj»p  ^^^■x^  Histinct  in  Tfrntl  froi)) 

that  of  the  purest  angel  and  the  most  triumphant  saint  %   If  we 


288  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

liave  faith  to  admit  the  Incarnation  itself,  we  must  admit  it  in  its 
fullness ;  why,  then,  should  we  start  at  the  gracious  appoint- 
ments which  arise  out  of  it,  or  are  necessary  to  it,  or  are 
included  in  hi  If  the  Creator  comes  on  earth  in  the  form  f 
a  servant  and  a  creature,  why  may  not  His  mother  on  th 
other  liand  rise  to  be  the  Queen  of  Heaven,  and  be  clothed 
with  the  sun,  and  have  the  moon  beneath  her  feet '{ " 

But  there  is  no  need  of  aryutaent  here  at  all.  It  is  Pusey's 
own  contention  that  the  intercession  of  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
more  eminently  than  that  of  all  the  saints,  for  us  who  are  still 
militant,  is  part  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Communion  of  Saints, 
and  a  necessary  consequence  of  God-given  love.  {Eirenicon, 
vol.  2,  p.  33.)  That  is  to  say :  God  has  so  determined  and 
disposed  that  she  should  intercede  in  behalf  of  all  those  for 
whom  Christ  paid  and  offered  the  superabundant  price  of  His 
Precious  Blood  in  which  alone  "is  our  sjdvation,  life,  and 
resurrection."  Her  intercession  is  a  part  of  the  Divine  j)lan, 
a  merciful  chain  by  which  God  has  bound  the  hearts  of  His 
prodigal  children  in  all  ages  to  Himself.  Pusey  and  St. 
Liguori,  one  of  the  greatest  luminaries  of  the  Catholic  Chnrch, 
are  at  one.  "  May  the  infinite  goodness  of  our  Lord  be  ever 
praised,"  says  Bishop  Kingdon's  "devout  soul,"  St.  Bernard, 
"for  having  been  pleased  to  give  us  Mary  as  our  advocate  in 
heaven,  that  she,  being  at  the  same  time  the  Mother  of  our 
Judge  and  a  Mother  of  Mercy,  may  be  able,  hy  her  interces- 
sion, to  conduct  to  a  prosperous  issue  the  great  affair  of  our 
eternal  salvation."  And  St.  Augustine  says:  "As  Mary  co- 
operated by  her  charity  in  the  spiritual  birth  of  tlie  faithful, 
so  also  God  wills  that  she  should  co-operate  by  her  intercession 
in  obtaining  for  them  the  life  of  grace  in  this  world  and  the 
life  of  glory  in  eternity."  These  quotations  are  from  St. 
Liguori,  and  this  is  the  doctrine  stamped  on  every  page  of  the 
"  Glories  of  Mary."  But  intercession  and  invocation  are  cor- 
relative doctrines  in  Catholic  teaching  which  Pusey  accepted 
absolutely,  and  I  have  already  triumphantly  proved  its  truth 
(piite  independently  of  his  admissions.  Now,  St.  Liguori  de- 
clares in  his  Introduction  that  the  great  object  of  his  book  is  to 
portray  Mary's  intcree&sorv  power  with  her  Divine  Son  and  to 


A  Kkjoindkb.  28'J 

urge  Catholics  to  Lave  recourse  to  it.  The  vision  of  the  two 
ladders  is  one  among  very  many  of  the  beautifully  striking 
and  figurative  illustrations  used  by  him  to  impress  this  truth 
upon  the  minds  of  his  readers.  "  Come  unto  Me  "  is  the  con- 
soling invitation  of  our  dear  Lord.  And  surely  we  do  not  go 
less  directly  to  our  Kedeemer  for  grace  and  salvation  by  going 
in  company  with  His  Blessed  Mother,  since  all  prayer  to  her 
(let  it  never  be  forg(jttcn)  is  always  most  truly,  though  indi- 
directly,  virtually  and  ultimately  the  worship  of  llim  from 
whom  alone  it  can  have  any  efficacy,  while  her  intercession 
secures  this  worship  offered  in  the  most  effective  way.  I  need 
not  dwell  longer  on  this  blazing  truth.  The  subtlest  minds  have 
confessed  its  incomparable  beauty,  as  the  purest  hearts  have 
done  homage  to  its  irresistible  attraction.  To  say  nothing  of 
countless  saints,  in  all  the  long  ages  of  the  past,  nor  of  myriads 
of  pure  and  bright  souls  known  only  to  God,  Mary  has  counted 
in  modern  times  among  her  noblest  children  and  most  loving 
clients  such  mighty  intellects  and  luminous  thinkers  as  Suarez, 
Bellarmine,  Schlegel,  Bossuet,  Fenelon,  Lacordaire,  Monsabru, 
Ward,  Harper,  Faber,  Manning,  Newman,  Brownson,  Mar- 
shall, and  Leo  XIII. 

The  Vicar  concludes  his  stricture  on  the  "  story  "  of  the  two 
ladders  as  follows : 

"  Liguori  says  in  the  story  Jesus  has  no  compassion  for 
struggling  sinnei's ;  He  will  not  lend  them  a  helping  hand  to 
Paradise ;  they  fall  again  and  again  if  they  respond  to  His 
invitation,  'Come  unto  Me,'  but  they  succeed  on  the  first 
attempt  up  Mary's  ladder,  because  she  has  such  compassion  for 
poor  sinners  she  will  bestir  herself  to  help  them.  There  is 
something  far  worse  than  grotesqueness  here — something  far 
worse  than  even  heresy.     It  is  apostasy." 

Were  I  to  characterize  this  infamy  in  the  words  of  our 
Divine  Lord  or  of  St.  John  the  Baptist,  the  Vicar  would  com- 
plain that  I  was  no  "gentleman"  and  protest  against  the  use 
of  the  "  Shillalah  ";  but,  in  the  face  of  my  explanation  of  the 
"  story,"  to  say  nothing  of  its  own  very  words,  is  not  his  state- 
ment an  outrage  against  reason  and  God  ?  It  contains  as  many 
falsehoods  as  lines.     There  is  no  contrast,  intended  by  the 


290  Il'SK,    Il'SA,    Il'SUM. 

saintly  writer,  between  Jesus  and  ^^ary  as  reganls  their  power 
and  willingness  to  help  s»juls  struj^gling  to  be  free.  Tiie  whole 
])oint  in  the  figure  is  to  enforce  the  elKcacy  of  the  Mother's 
intercession  with  the  Son  on  behalf  of  those  wlioni  lie  has  re- 
deemed. Who  but  ^he  Vicar  would  dare  inijiute  to  so  great 
a  saint  and  Doctor  of  the  Church  as  St.  Liguori  the  intoleral)le 
error  that  the  love  felt  for  us  by  Mary  exceeds  that  felt  for  us 
by  the  Soul  of  Christ  i 


LETTER  XXIV. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IP8UM — A    REJOINDER. 

To  the  Alitor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  continue  my  explanations  of  the  language  character- 
ized as  "  impious  "  by  the  "  gentleman  "  from  Oxford. 

2.  "God  retaineth  justice  to  Himself,  and  granted  mercy  to 
(Mary) "  {Eirenicon,  p.  105).  "  God  lias  resigned  into  her 
hands  (//*  one  may  say  so)  His  Omnipotence  in  the  sphere  of 
grace"  (p.  103).  "To  her  He  has  committed  the  kingdom  of 
mercy,  reserving  to  Himself  that  of  justice."  The  last  of  tliese 
quotations  is,  perhaps,  the  commonest  shape  in  which  the  idea 
is  expressed ;  but  that  idea  is  one  and  the  same.  Kow  such 
phrases  as  these  convey  a  meaning,  either  on  the  one  hand  intoler- 
able and  heretical,  or  on  the  other  hand  beautiful  and  edifying, 
according  to  the  sense  in  which  they  are  taken.  They  may  in 
themselves  mean  that  our  Divine  Lord  has  in  such  sense  given 
to  Mary  the  kingdom  of  mercy,  as  to  have  abdicated  that  king- 
dom IIim^ielf—t\mt  mercy  and  grace  can  no  longer  be  obtained 
by  addressing  Him  directly,  but  onl}'  by  invoking  His  mother. 
Such  a  notion,  no  Catliolic  need  be  told,  would  ]>e  nothing  less 
than  an  appalling  blasphemy.  T  will  only  say,  tliprefore,  that 
no  one  but  the  progeny  of  "  utterly  unredeemed  villains  "  ever 
•Jrcamcd  oi  so  undcrstancJmg  tlie  statement.  Oatliolics  know 
that  the  holy  men  who  most  constantly  uttered  it  were  also 
foremost  in  urging  those  prayers  to  the  Blessed  Sacrament  and 
the  Sacred  Heart  of  Jesus  which  are  absolutely  inconsistent 


A  Kkjoindkk.  2D1 

with  its  false  interpretation;  and  tliat  they  are  even  more 
ardent  and  glowing  than  other  Catholic  writers  in  their  descrip- 
tion of  those  unspeakable  blessings  which  How  from  prayer  to 
the  Sacred  Humanity  of  Christ.  Indeed,  tlu-oughuut  the  writ- 
ings of  the  great  St.  Liguori  there  is  manifested  a  veritable 
ocean  of  love  and  coniidence  in  our  Lord,  absolutelv  over- 
whelming  the  few  sentences  strongly  setting  forth  his  severity 
to  sinners.  Open,  for  instance,  his  "  Reflections  on  the  Pa8sit)n 
of  our  Lord."  Li  chapter  xiv.  he  says:  "Jesus Christ  did  not 
cease  with  Ilis  death  to  intercede  for  us  before  the  Eternal 
Father.  lie  still  at  present  is  our  advocate ;  and  it  seems  as  if 
in  heaven  (as  St.  Paul  writes)  He  knew  no  other  office  than 
that  of  moving  His  Father  to  show  us  mercy — '  always  living 
to  make  intercession  for  us'  (Ileb.  vii.).  And,  adds  the  Apos- 
tle, the  Saviour  for  this  end  has  ascended  into  Heaven  '  that 
He  may  appear  in  the  presence  of  God  for  us ' "  (Heb.  ix.). 
This  is  but  an  imperfect  sample. 

There  remains,  then,  the  true  sense  of  the  statement  I  am 
considering.  Christ  has  reserved  wholly  to  Himself  the  king- 
dom of  justice ;  He  has  given  to  His  mother  no  lot  or  |)art 
whatever  in  the  oflice  of  judging  and  condemning.  r>ut  Cath- 
olics love  to  say  that  He  has  so  handed  over  to  her  His  king- 
dom of  mercy,  that  she  possesses  (as  it  is  often  expressed)  an 
*'  Inter cessm'y  omnipotence''^ j  that  the  invocation  of  her  will  be 
fully  as  effective  in  obtaining  mercy  and  grace  from  Christ,  as 
would  be  prayer  to  Him  offered  with  the  same  dispositions.  To 
all,  therefore,  who  feel  themselves  bowed  down  by  a  sense  of  sin, 
she  is  a  truly  attractive  object  of  veneration  and  supplication, 
because  her  office  in  heaven  as  an  intercessor  is  exclusively  that 
of  mercy,  and  within  that  sphere  her  Divine  Son  has  connnuni- 
cated  to  her  the  greatest  power.  Father  Newman  says :  "  Our 
Lord  cannot  pray  for  us,  as  a  creature,  as  Mary  prays  ;  He  can- 
ii(">t  insoire  those  feelings  winch  a  creature  in  spires.  'J'o  her 
))p]or(rra,  ^a  K^ipor  ^  cresti'Ts  R  'jjnt'jrHl  cl^irp  0''?  "jiff,  "^'mp.-ikv- 
and  familiarity,  in  that  she  is  nothing  else  than  our  fellow.  She 
is  our  pride, — in  the  poet's  words, '  Our  tainted  nature's  solitary 
bop.Gt.'  \Vc-  look  to  her  without  any  fear,  any  remorse,  any 
consciousness  that  she  is  able  to  read  us,  judge  us,  punish  us." 


292  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

3.  "  To  sinners  who  have  lost  Divine  grace,  there  is  no  more 
sun  "  (the  symbol  of  Jesus)  "for  him,  but  the  moon  is  still  on 
the  horizon ;  let  him  address  himself  to  Mary  "  (p.  106).  "  No 
sinner  doth  deserve  that  Christ  should  any  more  make  inter- 
cession for  him  with  the  Father  ....  and  therefore  it  was 
necessary  that  Christ  should  constitute  His  well-be.oved  Mother 
a  mediatrix  between  us  and  Him  "  (p.  105).  "  (Mary)  is  the 
only  refuge  of  those  who  have  incurred  the  Divine  indigna- 
tion." "  Often  we  shall  be  heard  more  quickly,  and  be  thus 
preserved,  if  we  have  recourse  to  Mary  and  call  upon  her 
name,  than  we  should  be  if  we  called  on  the  name  of  Jesus 
our  Savit  tr."  "Many  things  are  asked  from  God  and  are 
not  granted ;  they  are  asked  from  Mary  and  are  obtained." 

The  last  two  are  the  Vicar's  quotations  from  St.  Liguori  in 
his  first  letter.  Now,  did  he  find  such  words  as  the  above 
without  any  indication  of  authorship,  the  Vicar,  with  his  frag- 
mentary idea  of  Christianity  and  peculiar  vieics  on  the  Incar- 
nation, might  be  forgiven  if  he  understood  them  to  mean,  that 
one  who  has  fallen  into  mortal  sin  commits  grievous  pre- 
sumption in  offering  direct  prayer  to  God ;  and  that  God 
would  have  no  power  to  remit  mortal  sin  if  He  had  not  created 
Mary  to  intercede  for  it.  But  notoriously  every  Catholic  in 
the  world  would  regard  either  of  these  propositions  with  horror 
unspeakable — and  since  the  words  were  addressed  by  a  Catho- 
lic to  Catholics,  it  is  clear  that  neither  writer  nor  readers  under- 
stand any  such  blasphemy.  In  fact,  as  I  have  often  explained, 
St.  Liguori  and  others  were  able  to  use  such  strong  language, 
precisely  because  no  one  of  their  readers  could  by  possibility 
take  their  words  in  their  literal  sense.  It  is  as  though  a  son  said 
to  his  mother :  "  You  are  the  author  of  my  being — in  you  is 
my  only  hope,"  and  the  Vicar  immediately  pounced  on  him 
for  blasphemously  and  impiously  introducing  a  second  Deity.  . 

Let  me  submit  a  Catholic  interpretation  of  the  language  I 
am  considering.  It  is  as  if  the  saintly  authors  had  said  to  us : 
"  If  you  have  once  possessed  the  unspeakable  blessedness  of 
justification  and  adoption,  and  have  fallen  from  that  blessed- 
ness by  deliberately  outraging  your  Creator  with  mortal  sin, 
you  have  nothing  favorable  to  expect  from  God's  Justice. 


A  Rejoinder.  293 

With  no  approach  to  injustice,  God  might  remove  you  straight- 
way from  earth  to  hell ;  there  is  nothing  bought  for  you  by 
Christ  in  His  Sacred  Passion  which  could  preclude  your  Cre- 
ator from  so  acting.  You  must  sue,  then,  for  favors  which 
Christ  has  not  secured  for  you  by  His  Passion — you  must 
throw  yourself  most  unreservedly  on  His  Mercy,  and  you  have 
more  hope  of  forgiveness  in  proportion  as  you  more  keenly 
realize  this  fact.  Yet  this  very  keenness  of  realization  may 
injure  you,  unless  you  adopt  the  appointed  remedy.  Your 
sense  of  the  insult  you  have  offered  to  God  may  make  you 
feel  as  though  there  were  '  no  sun  in  the  horizon ' — may  make 
you  slow  in  apprehending  the  boundless  mercy  of  Him  wlio  is 
to  be  your  judge.  He  has  Himself  provided  for  this  your  ob- 
vious need.  He  has  appointed  a  mediatrix,  who  entertains  for 
you  no  feeling  but  that  of  pity,  and  whose  maternal  love  will 
strengthen  and  encourage  you  to  approach  her  Son.  x^or  is 
this  all ;  for  her  prayers  have  a  most  powerful  effect  in  obtain- 
ing for  you  a  far  greater  degree  of  mercy  than  He  would  other- 
wisp  hn-e  granted." 

4.  '  ,Ir2g  He  obeyed  not  only  His  Father,  but  also  His 

Mot:'  158).     "  The  Blessed  Virgin  is  superior  to  God, 

and  God  Himself  is  subject  to  her  in  respect  of  the  manhood 
which  He  assumed  from  her,"  "  However  she  be  subject  unto 
God,  inasmuch  as  she  is  a  creature,  yet  she  is  said  to  be  superior 
and  placed  over  Him,  inasmuch  as  she  is  His  Mother."  "  You 
have  over  God  the  authority  of  a  mother,  and  hence  you  obtain 
.  pardon  for  the  most  obdurate  sinners."  "  At  the  command  of 
the  Virgin  all  things  obey,  even  God." — Vicar's  quotation  in 
first  lettei'. 

My  opponent,  in  his  ignorance,  is  often  so  severe  on  Catholics 
for  going  beyond  Scripture,  that  one  might  have  expected 
some  forbearance  when  they  have  but  used  New  Testament 
language.  St.  Luke  says  (c.  ii.  v.  51):  "lie  came  to  Nazareth, 
and  was  subject  to  them."  "Who  was  "He"  ?  The  Incarnate 
God.  Who  were  "  they '■  ?  Mary  and  Joseph.  Now,  Pusey, 
in  his  first  volume,  p.  103,  expresses  himself  as  though  the 
very  phrase  "  God  is  subject  to  Mary  "  were  so  plainly  revolt- 
ing as  to  require  no  express  refutation :  yet  it  is  almost  word 


294  Ipse,  Ij'sa,  Ipsum. 

for  word  the  Holy  Ghosfs  statement  through  St.  Lxike! 
Moreover,  to  say  that  the  Incarnate  God  was  suhject  to  Mary 
and  Joseph  is  simply  and  precisely  saying  in  other  words  that 
they  were  "'  superiors  "  "  set  over  "  the  Incarnate  God.  We 
have  it,  then,  on  the  inf  alii  hie  authority  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
that  for  certain  years  the  Incarnate  God  was  subject  to  His 
Mother ;  that  she  was  "  superior  "  to  Him — "  set  over  "  Him 
— "  had  over  Him  the  authority  of  a  mother," 

There  are  probably  many  "educated  English  gentlemen, 
holding  the  Orders  of  the  Church  of  England,"  who,  on  read- 
ing this  argument,  would  at  once  object,  that  our  Lord  was 
only  placed  under  Mary  and  Joseph  during  His  nonage,  before 
His  faculties  were  fully  developed.  The  Vicar  has  given  no 
evidence  that  his  belief  is  otherwise.  But  Pusey  held,  of 
course,  as  strongly  as  Catholics  do,  that  from  the  very  moment 
of  His  miraculous  Conception  the  soul  of  Christ  knew  dis- 
tinctly and  explicitly  every  object  which  it  knows  even  at  this 
present  moment.  Other  Protestants  again  are  more  or  less 
consciously  under  the  impression,  that  since  our  Lord's  As- 
cension His  Sacred  Humanity  has  in  some  sense  ceased  to  b3 ; 
but  here  again  Pusey  would  heartily  anathematize  any  such 
heresy. 

Let  me  begin,  then,  by  examining  what  the  Holy  Ghost  meant 
in  St.  Luke's  words.  This,  of  course,  is  certain  ;  that  at  every 
moment  there  was  this  or  that  particular  act,  which  the  Eternal 
Father  wished  the  soul  of  Christ  to  elicit ;  and  also  that  this 
precise  act,  did,  in  fact,  always  take  place.  "We  cannot  sup- 
pose, however,  consistently  with  St.  Luke's  language  (to  jnit  it 
on  no  other  ground),  that  the  commands  of  Mai-y  and  Josepli 
were  constantly  overruled  by  the  superior  claim  of  God's  will ; 
and  still  less  can  we  suppose  that  that  Will  surrendered  its 
claim  to  them.  Only  one  supposition  then  remains,  which  is 
unquestionably  the  true  one.  God  so  inspired  Mary  and 
Joseph  that  whenever  they  commanded  Jesus,  such  command 
was  precisely  accordant  with  the  Divine  preference  ;  and  Jesus, 
among  the  various  motives  which  at  that  moment  influenced 
His  human  will,  vouchsafed  and  deigned  to  direct  His  act  to 
this  particular  motive  also,  viz.,  the  virtuousness  of  obeying 


A  Rejoinder.  295 

His  Mother;  and  of  obeying  liim,  too,  whom  God  had  ap- 
pointed to  stand  in  the  place  of  an  earthly  father. 

Now,  firstly  I  ask,  what  possible  diflHculty  there  can  be  in 
supposing  that  the  same  obedience  was  paid  by  Jesus  to  Mary's 
authority  at  a  somewhat  later  period,  viz.,  when  He  entered  on 
His  Passion  ?  That  He  prepared  Himself  for  this  by  asking 
her  permission?  That  "by  dying  He  obeyed  not  only  His 
Father  but  also  His  mother  "  ?  I  am  not  arguing  that  He  did 
so,  though,  for  myself,  I  have  every  disposition  to  believe  that 
He  did  so.  But  I  ask,  what  possible  theological  ohjectioti  can 
be  raised  against  such  an  opinion,  should  it  commend  itself  to 
some  holy  and  "  devout  "soul "  ?  Canon  Oakeley  (The  Leading 
Topics  of  Dr.  Pusey's  recent  Work,  pp.  24-25)  points  out  the 
plain  implication  of  Scripture,  that  at  the  Annunciation  "  She 
must  express  her  free  and  imbiased  consent  before  the  human 
race  can  be  redeemed  in  the  manner  fore-ordained  of  God  "  : 
aTid  he  then  proceeds : 

"Xor  can  I  see  (though  I  admit  this  to  be  rather  the  pious 
inference  of  devotion,  than  the  logical  conclusion  of  dogma) 
that  any  more  direct  share  in  the  unapproachable  office  of  our 
Redeemer  is  ascribed  to  His  Blessed  Mother  in  re<jardl)uj  the 
Passion  itself  as  suspended  ujyon  her  consent,  than  is  implied 
in  the  intimacy  thus  proved  by  the  language  of  Scripture  itself 
to  have  existed  from  the  first  between  the  decrees  of  the  most 
Holy  Trinity  and  the  free-will  of  the  Blessed  Virgin." 

Now,  then,  following  Jesus  and  Mary  from  earth  to  heaven, 
something  still  surely  remains  in  their  mutual  relations,  not 
identical  indeed  (far  from  it),  yet  surely  not  unanalogous. 
Take  the  parallel  of  an  absolute  monarch,  whose  mother  still 
lives  and  is  fondly  loved  by  him.  He  possesses  over  her  un- 
doubtedly supreme  authority,  and  so  far  from  her  being  able 
in  any  true  sense  to  command  him,  he  can  impose  his  com- 
mands on  her  without  appeal.  And  yet  his  assent  to  her  just 
petitions  will  not  altogether  resemble  in  kind  his  assent  to 
other  suppliants, — he  wiT  regard  her  still  with  a  real  filial 
deference,  and  she  will  in  tigurative  sense,  exercise  over  him 
a  certain  maternal  authority.  This,  then,  is  the  simple  and 
obvious  sense  of  the  expressions  last  above  quoted.    Such  burn- 


2£6  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ips[jm. 

ing  words  represent,  indeed,  rather  the  shape  into  which  men 
of  ascetic  lives  and  profoundly  spiritual  minds  are  accustomed 
to  cast  their  thoughts,  than  the  standard  of  ordinary  preaching 
or  the  scale  of  general  devotion.  Yet  it  seems  most  touching 
and  appropriate,  and  most  conducive  to  a  real  apprehension  of 
the  Divine  Personality  of  Christ  and  a  more  intense  love  of 
the  Incarnate  God,  that  earnest  devotees  of  Mary  should  de- 
light in  setting  forth,  exhibiting,  amplifying,  her  various  unap- 
proached  and  singular  prerog..  ves  among  God's  Saints.  She 
herself  declares  them  in  the  Magnificat :  "  For  He  that  is 
mighty  hath  done  great  things  to  me  and  holy  is  His  name." 

I  may  add  here,  as  in  the  former  case,  that  the  paradoxical 
form  itself  which  such  expressions  wear,  shows  clearly  how  far 
it  was  from  the  mind  of  their  originators  that  they  should  be 
construed  literally.  In  every  case  a  Catholic  in  a  Catholic 
country  was  addressing  Catholics,  who  could  never  dream  of 
suspecting  him  to  mean  what  both  he  and  they  knew  to  be 
erroneous  and  heretical.  No  one  more  abounds  in  such  ex. 
pressions  than  St.  Liguori,  and  no  one  takes  greater  pains  than 
he  to  guard  against  perversions  of  his  meaning,  as  I  pointed  out 
in  my  last  letter.  He  gives  his  testimony  to  the  general  ortho- 
doxy around  him  in  the  words  already  cited :  "  Figures  are  per- 
mitted whenever  there  cannot  he  any  mistalce  on  the  subject." 
Of  course  there  were  no  Ritualistic  Vicars  abroad  in  these  days. 

5.  "It  seems  to  be  a  part  of  this  system  to  parallel  the 
Blessed  Virgin  throughout  with  her  Divine  Son,  so  that  every 
prerogative  which  belonged  to  Him  by  nature  or  office,  should 
be  in  some  measure  imputed  to  her"  (p.  161).  The  Vicar 
adopts  this,  and  copies  from  Pusey  in  support  of  it,  a  confused 
"  heap  "  of  incoherent  ejaculations. 

Can  there  be  a  more  perverse  and  stupid  comment  than  this? 
If  you  earnestly  love  two  objects,  it  is  a  delight  to  trace  every 
possible  analogy  and  similarity  between  them ;  between  their 
circumstances,  their  character,  their  benefits  to  you :  and  the 
fact  therefore,  to  which  Pusey  draws  attention  (the  Vicar  can- 
not see  beyond  the  mere  letter  of  Pusey's  page),  shows  how 
dearly  the  lovers  of  Mary  love  her  Son.  But  who,  except 
Anglicans  and  parasites  of  the  crude  and  unenlightened  views 


A  Rejoinder.  297 

of  Pusey's  first  volume,  would  dream  of  drawing  the  very 
opposite  conclusion  of  inferring  that  Catholics  elevate  the 
Mother  into  her  Son's  rival  and  antagonist  ? 


!  LETTER  XXY. 

IPSE,    IPSA,   IPSI3      —A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe: 

Sir, — I  resume  my  explanations  of  the  language  on  which 
the  "  educated  English  gentleman  "  from  Oxford  '•  holding  the 
Orders  of  the  Church  of  England  "  bases  his  charges  of  "  Infi- 
delity," "  Apostasy "  and  "  Idolatry "  against  the  Catholic 
Church — the  Bride  of  Christ. 

6.  St.  Liguori  says :  "  Those  whom  the  justice  of  God  saves 
not,  the  infinite  mercy  of  Mary  saves  by  her  intercession." 

Pusey  puts  the  word  "  infinite  "  in  italics,  as  showing  the 
point  of  his  objection  ;  but  can  it  be  seriously  claimed  that  St. 
Liguori  lays  down  a  dogmatic  proposition,  the  infinitude  of 
Mary's  attributes ?  "I  have  taken  infinite  trouble  to  oblige 
you,"  says  a  friend  to  the  Vicar.  "  Sir,"  gravely  replies  the 
latter,  "  you  shock  me ;  no  one  can  do  anything  infinite  save 
God  alone."  St.  Liguori  meant,  of  course,  that  the  Mother's 
mercy  and  love  for  her  Son's  redeemed  embraces  every  kind  of 
evil,  moral  or  spiritual,  which  can  possibly  be  brought  before 
her  in  prayer. 

7.  St.  Liguori  also  says  (p.  103):  "God  has  resigned  into 
her  hands  {if  one  might  say  so)  His  Omnipotence  in  the  Sphere 
of  grace."  The  very  words  which  I  have  italicized  show  that 
he  is  not  speaking  literally ;  and  the  general  thought  has  been 
already  explained  under  No.  2. 

8.  "  Mary  is  our  only  refuge,  help,  and  Asylum."  "  Health 
of  the  Weak,  Refuge  of  Sinners,  Comforter  of  the  Afflicted, 
Help  of  Christians." 

These  are  titles  given,  as  I  have  already  shown,  by  the 
Fathers  and  saintly  writers  throughout  the  ages,  to  the  Blessed 


298  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ip.sum. 

Virgin.  Her  Litany  of  Loretto  (so  called)  is  a  necklace  of 
such  tenderly  beautiful  pearls ;  and  I  have  before  me  at  this 
moment  tlie  name  of  each  contributor  to  the  collection,  from 
the  "  Holy  Mother  of  God  "  of  the  Council  of  Ephesus  to 
"  Queen  of  the  Holy  Rosary,"  solemnly  added  by  the  beloved 
and  illustrious  Leo  XIIL  Plow  it  must  sadden  the  heart  of  a 
"  true  Catholic  "  Ritualist  to  see  so  great  a  Pope — and  in  the 
nineteenth  century  too ! — thus  abet  and  promote  "  Infidelity," 
"  Apostasy  "  and  "  Idolatry  "  !  In  his  third  "  Stricture  "  the 
Vicar  told  us  that :  "  On  the  accession  of  Leo  XIIL  wiser 
councils  prevailed"  "with  regard  to  the  worship  of  Mary." 
How  chilling  to  his  "  true  Catholic  "  aspirations ! 

But  let  me  give  your  readers  the  context  of  these  titles  from 
St.  Liguori  himself.  They  can  then  form  some  idea  of  the 
honesty  and  fairness  of  the  Vicar  and  his  patron  saint — Little- 
dale.     St.  Liguori  writes : 

The  Angelical  Doctor,  St.  Thomas,  says,  that  we  can  place  our 
hope  in  a  pei-son  in  two  ways :  as  a  principal  cause,  and  as  a  medi- 
ate one.  Those  who  hope  for  a  favor  from  a  king,  hope  it  fronx 
him  as  lord,  they  hope  for  it  from  his  minister  or  favorite  as  an 
intercessor.  If  the  favor  is  granted  it  comes  primainly  from  the 
king,  but  it  comes  through  the  instrumentality  of  the  favorite ;  and 
in  this  case  he  who  seeks  the  favor  is  nght  in  calling  his  intercessor 
his  hope,  &c.  The  King  of  Heaven,  being  infinite  goodness, 
desires  in  the  highest  degeee  to  enrich  us  with  His  graces ;  but  be- 
cause confidence  is  requisite  on  our  part,  and  in  order  to  increase  it 
in  us.  He  has  given  us  His  own  mother  to  become  our  mother  and 
advocate — (our  most  powerful  intercessor,  as  Pusey  admits) — and  to 
her  He  has  given  all  power  to  help  us ;  and,  therefore,  He  wills  that 
we  should  repose  our  hope  of  salvation  and  of  every  blessing  in  her. 
Those  who  place  their  hopes  in  creatures  alone,  independently  of 
God,  as  sinners  do,  and  in  oi-der  to  obtain  the  favor  and  friendship 
of  man,  fear  not  to  outrage  bis  divine  Majesty,  are  most  eertamly 
cursed  by  God,  as  the  prophet  Jei-ennas  says.  But  thase  who  hope 
in  Mary,  as  Mother  of  God,  who  is  able  to  obtain  graces  and  eternal 
life  for  them,  are  truly  blessed  and  acceptable  to  the  heart  of  God, 
who  desii-es  to  see  that  greatest  of  His  creatures  honored,  for  she 
loved  and  honored  Him  in  this  world  more  than  all  men  and  angels 
put  together.  And  therefore  we  justly  and  reasonably  call  the 
Blessed  Virgin  our  hope,  trusiuig,  as  Cardinal  Bellai-mine  says, 
"That  we  shall  obtain  by  her  intercession,  that  which  we  should 


A  Kejoindek.  299 

not  obtain  by  our  own  unaided  prayers."  "We  pray  to  her,"  says 
the  learned  Suarez,  "in  oixler  that  the  dignity  of  the  intercessor 
may  supply  for  our  own  unworthiness ;  so  that  (he  continues)  to 
implore  the  Blessed  Virgin  in  such  a  spirit,  is  not  diffidence  in  the 
mercy  of  God,  but  fear  of  our  own  unworthiness." 

Perhaps,  after  all,  it  is  only  "the  poor  Irish"  who  can  ap- 
preciate this,  since  there  are  only  "  two  beings,  certainly  pucIi, 
■in  rerum  natu7xi^^  whom  the  "  lawless "  Ritualistic  preacher 
does  not  fear — Almighty  God  and  his  own  Bishop,  whom,  as 
ex-deacon  Froude  tells  us,  he  regards  only  as  "  some  high-bred, 
worn-out  animal,  useless  in  himself,  but  infinitely  valuable  for 
some  mysterious  purpose  of  spiritual  propagation." 

I  have  thus  far  considered  not  only  all  the  quotations  from 
St.  Liguori  made  by  the  Vicar,  but  a  selection  of  the  most  dif- 
ficult from  Pusey  as  well.  I  now  proceed  to  those  extracts 
which  the  Vicar  prophesied  would  be  "new  and  perhaps 
shocking  to  many  of  the  Komanists  of  this  diocese."  They 
are  taken  from  a  work  of  the  venerable  Grignon  de  Montfort, 
translated  into  English  by  the  saintly  Father  Faber,  who 
speaks  of  the  book  in  these  terms : 

"  There  is  a  growing  feeling  of  something  inspired  and  supernatu- 
ral about  it  as  we  go  on  studying  it ;  and  Avith  that  we  cannot  help 
experiencing  after  repeated  i-eadings  of  it  that  its  novelty  never  ap- 
pears to  wear  off,  nor  its  fullness  to  be  diminished,  nor  the  fragrance 
and  sensible  fire  of  its  unction  ever  to  abate. " 

This  is  pretty  good  testimony  from  very  high  authority. 
But  before  considering  in  order  those  various  propositions  of 
Montfort  which  I  am  specially  to  treat,  I  will  give  one  or  two 
other  extracts  as  illustrating  the  relative  position  which  he  re- 
spectively ascribes  to  our  Divine  Lord  and  His  blessed  mother. 
He  says : 

"I  avow,  with  all  the  Church,  that  Mary,  being  but  a  mere  creat- 
ure that  has  come  from  the  hands  of  the  Most  High  is,  in  compari- 
son with  His  Infinite  Majesty,  less  than  an  atom ;  or  rather  she  is 
nothmg  at  all,  because  He  only  is  '  He  Who  is.'  and  thus  by  cnnsp- 
quence  that  grand  Lord,  alv  .ys  independent  and  sufficient  for 
Himself,  never  had,  and  has  not  now,  any  absolute  need  of  the  holy 


300  Ii'SE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

virgin  for  the  accomplishment  of  His  will  and  for  the  mani- 
festation of  His  glory 

"Jesus  Christ  our  Saviour  true  God  and  true  Man,  ought  to  be 
the  last  end  of  all  our  devotions,  else  they  are  false  and  delusive. 
Jesus  Christ  is  the  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
all  things.  We  labor  not,  as  the  Apostle  says,  except  to  render 
every  man  perfect  in  Jesus  Christ;  because  it  is  in  Him  alone  that 
the  whole  plenitude  of  the  Divinity  dwells,  togetlier  with  all  the 
other  plenitude  of  graces,  virtues,  and  perfections ;  because  it  is  in 
Him  alone  that  we  have  been  blessed  with  all  spiritual  benediction ; 
and  because  He  is  our  only  Master,  who  has  to  teach  us ;  our  only- 
Lord,  on  whom  we  ouglit  to  depend ;  our  only  Head,  to  whom  we 
must  belong;  our  only  Model,  to  whom  we  should  conform  our- 
selves ;  our  only  Physician,  who  can  heal  us;  our  only  Shepherd, 
tvho  can  feed  us;  our  only  Way,  who  can  lead  us;  our  only  Truth, 
who  can  make  us  grow;  our  only  Life,  who  can  animate  us;  and  our 
only  All  in  all  things,  who  can  suffice  us.  There  has  been  no  other 
name  given  under  heaven,  except  the  name  of  Jesus,  by  which  we 
can  be  saved.  God  has  laid  no  other  foundation  of  our  salvation, 
of  our  perfection,  and  of  our  glory,  except  Jesus  Christ.  Every 
building  which  is  not  built  upon  that  firm  rock  is  founded  upon 
the  moving  sand,  and  sooner  or  later  will  fall  infallibly.  Every- 
one of  the  faithful  who  is  not  united  to  Him,  as  a  branch  to  the 
stock  of  the  vine,  shall  fall,  shall  wither,  and  shall  be  fit  only  to 
cast  into  the  fire.  If  we  are  in  Jesus  Christ,  and  Jesus  Christ  in  us, 
we  have  no  condemnation  to  fear.  Neither  the  angels  of  heaven, 
nor  the  men  of  earth  nor  the  devils  of  hell,  nor  any  other  creatures, 
can  injure  us ;  because  they  cannot  separate  us  from  the  love  of  God 
which  is  in  Jesus  Christ.  By  Jesus  Christ,  with  Jesus  Christ,  in 
Jesus  Christ,  we  can  do  all  things ;  we  can  render  all  honor  and 
glory  to  the  Father  in  the  unity  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  we  can  become 
perfect  ourselves,  and  be  to  our  neighbore  a  good  odor  of  eternal 
life. 

"  If,  then,  we  establish  the  solid  devotion  to  our  Blessed  Lady,  it 
is  only  to  establish  more  perfectly  the  devotion  to  Jesus  Christ,  and 
to  put  forward  an  easy  and  secure  means  for  finding  Jesus  Christ. 
If  devotion  to  our  Lady  removed  us  from  Jesus  Christ  we  should 
have  to  reject  it  as  an  illusion  of  the  Devil,  but  on  the  contrary,  so 
far  from  this  being  the  case,  there  is  nothing  which  makes  devotion 
to  our  Lady  more  necessary  for  us,  as  I  have  already  shown,  and 
will  show  still  farther  hereafter,  than  that  it  is  the  means  of  finding 
Jesus  Christ  perfectly,  of  loving  Him  tenderly,  and  cf  serving  Him 
faithfully  "  (pp.  37-39). 


A  Rejoinder.  301 

Is  there  any  "  Infidelity,"  "  Apostasy,"  or  "  Idolatry  "  about 
this?  Let  me  ask  your  fair  readers  a  simple  question :  Are 
any  words  quite  adequate  to  express  the  feelings  of  detestation 
and  sickening  disgust  thai  must  force  themselves  on  the  mind 
in  presence  of  the  tactics  of  this  Vicar?  Remember — he  has 
never  read,  nay  more,  never  seen,  Montfort's  book.  This  is 
the  most  charitable  view,  while,  I  am  sure,  it  is  simple  fact. 
And  yet,  while  simulating  an  honesty  to  which  he  is  an  utter 
stranger,  and  pretending  an  anxiety  for  "  verification,"  he 
snatches  up  second-hand  a  lot  of  scraps,  and  swoops  down  upon 
the  Catholic  Church  and  attempts  to  defile  by  his  Harpy  touch 
the  purest  and  holiest  thoughts.  But  he  calls  himself  a  "  true 
Catholic"  and  a  "Priest"!  May  God  forgive  so  sacrilegious 
use  of  two  so  venerable  words ! 

Your  readers  will  bear  in  mind  that  the  Vicar  copies  his 
extracts  from  Pusey's^^'*^  volume  of  the  Eirenicon.  He  in- 
troduces those  which  I  am  about  to  explain  with  these  words : 
"  De  Montfort  does  not  scruple  to  assign  to  the  Blessed  Vir- 
gin an  office  like  that  of  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  in  dwelling  in 
the  soul."  Compare  this  with  Pusey's  statement  as  follows: 
"  (De  Montfort)  seemis)  to  assign  to  her  an  office  like  that  of 
God  the  Holy  Ghost,  in  dwelling  in  the  soul."  In  the  words 
I  have  italicized  your  readers  can  see  the  difference  between 
the  rabid,  ignorant  fanatic  and  the  man  who  fears  to  misrepre- 
sent. Pusey  says :  "  It  seems  to  me  that  De  Montfort  meant 
so  and  so,"  implying  a  doubt  of  his  understanding  him  aright ; 
the  Vicar,  with  no  more  aptitude  for  entering  into  the  spiritual 
beauties  of  a  writer  like  Montfort  than  a  Chimpanzee,  changes 
Pusey's  modest  doubt  into  an  absolute  affirmation  that  Mont- 
fort "  does  not  scruple  "  to  say  so  and  so.  Commend  me  to  a 
ritualist  "  Priest "  for  honesty  and  a  tender  regard  for  truth ! 
I  need  not  say  that  the  idea  in  any  shape,  ascribed  to  Mont- 
fort, is  ridiculous  in  the  extreme.  And  now  for  the  quota- 
tions. 

9.  "De  Montfort  speaks  of  souls  which  are  not  born  of 
blood,  nor  of  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man,  but  of  God  and 
Mavy."  Let  me  give  your  readers  the  context  of  these  words. 
Montfort,  speaking  of  his  book,  says : 


302  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

*'  Oh  1  but  my  labor  will  have  been  well  expeuded  if  this  little  writ- 
ing, falling  into  the  hands  of  a  soul  of  good  dispositions,  a  soul  well 
born, — born  of  God  and  of  Mary,  and  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of 
the  flesh,  nor  of  the  will  of  man, — should  unfold  to  iiira,  and  should  by 
the  grace  of  the  Holy  Ghost  inspire  him  with  the  excellence  and  the 
price  of  that  true  and  solid  devotion  to  our  Blessed  Lady,  which  I 

am  going  presently  to  describe I  ftel  myself  nioi-e  than  ever 

animated  to  believe  and  to  hope  all  which  I  hiive  had  desply  en- 
graven upon  my  heart,  and  have  asked  of  God  those  m my  years, 
namely,  that  sooner  or  later  the  Blessed  Virgin  shall  have  more 
children  of  love  than  ever;  and  that  by  thia  means,  Jegus  Christ, 
viy  dear  Master,  shall  reign  more  in  hearts  than  ever." 

In  the  face  of  such  burning  words  as  these,  where  is  the  dif- 
ficulty in  the  expression  under  consideration  'i  Is  not  a  cold 
spirit  of  criticism  most  revolting?  An  examination  of  the  fol- 
lowing extracts  will  make  this  very  clear. 

10.  "Tlie  Holy  Ghost  chose  to  make  use  of  our  Blessed 
Lady  to  bring  His  fruitfulness  into  action  by  })roducing  in  her 
and  by  her  Jesus  Christ  in  His  members."  "  When  Mary  has 
struck  her  roots  in  tlie  soul,  she  there  produces  these  marvels 
of  grace  which  she  alone  can  produce,  because  she  alone  is  the 
fruitful  Virgin,  who  never  lias  liad,  and  never  will  liave,  her 
equal  in  purity  and  fruitfulness."  "  She  alone  can  produce  in 
union  witli  the  Holy  Ghost  singular  and  extraordinary  things. 
When  the  Holy  Ghost,  her  spouse,  lias  found  Mary  in  a  soul. 
He  flies  there ;  He  communicates  Himself  to  that  soul  abun- 
dantly and  to  the  full  extent  to  which  she  makes  room  for  her 
spouse." 

Kow,  these  expressions,  in  their  obvious  Catholic  sense,  are 
simply  beautiful  and  singularly  suggestive.  They  are  based 
upon  the  analogy  between  that  joint  office,  on  the  one  hand, 
whereby,  iti  the  Incarnation,  the  Holy  Ghost  and  Mary  pro- 
duced Christ  Himself,  and  that  joint  office,  on  the  other  hand, 
whereby  they  form  Christ  in  the  individual  soul.  The  thought 
which  they  express  is  simply  a  development  of  the  doctrine  of 
our  Lady's  Maternity,  and  is  evidently  taken  from  St.  Augus- 
tine. Nay,  the  very  passage  is  quoted  by  Montfort  in  which 
that  Father  says,  that  according  to  the  Spirit,  Mary  is  clenrly 
our  Mother,  both  because  we  are  His  members  who  took  flesh 


A  IIejoindku.  303 

in  her  womb,  and  because  by  l»er  love  she  co-operated  in  the 
birth  of  the  faithful  in  the  Church,  of  whom  lie  is  the  head. 
That  the  Vicar  may  gratify  hie  taste  for  "  veritication "  and 
consult  his  "friends  in  England,"  I  give  the  original  from  St. 
Augustine  as  follows:  "Spiritu  quidem  ....  jdane  Mater 
est  membroruin  ejus,  quod  nos  sumus;  quia  co-operata  est 
charitate  ut  iideles  in  Ecclesia  nascerentur,  (piae  illius  capitis 
membra  sunt:  corpore  vero  ipsius  capitis  Mater"  {De  Sancta 
Vhginitate,  Lilt.  i.  6).  The  same  thought  is  expressed  by 
Origen,  when  he  says :  "  Jesus  says  to  His  Mother,  '  Behold 
thy  son  1 '  and  not  '  Behold  he  too  is  thy  son ! '  as  if  He  had 
said :  Behold  here  is  Jesus  whom  thou  hast  begotten.  For 
whoever  is  perfect,  no  longer  lives  himself,  but  Christ  lives  in 
him.  And  as  in  him  Christ  lives,  so  it  is  said  to  Mary :  Be- 
hold thy  Son,  Christ"  {Orlgcn  inJoann,  i.  6).  And  St.  Bona- 
venture  says :  "  Mary  has  two  sons,  the  Man-God  and  pure 
man,  and  of  both  she  is  the  mother,  of  the  one  corporally,  of 
the  other  spiritually."  Again,  too.  Blessed  Albert  the  Great 
teaches  that  Mary  is  tlie  "  Mother  of  all  who  are  reborn  to  life, 
and  she  is  the  Mother  of  us  all  according  to  all  the  properties 
of  maternity,  because  He  was  begotten  of  her  in  whom  all  are 
regenerated."  And  so  also  the  great  Abbot  Guerric  most 
beautifully  writes:  "She  is  the  only  Virgin  mother  who 
glories  in  having  brought  forth  the  only  Begotten  of  the 
Father,  who  embraces  her  only  Begotten  in  all  His  members, 
and  who  is  not  confounded  at  being  called  the  Mother  of  all 
those  in  whom  she  recognizes  that  her  own  Christ  has  been 
formed,  or  is  in  the  course  of  formation ;"  and  again  :  "  If  the 
servant  of  Christ  (St.  Paul,  Galatians  iv.  19)  is  in  labor  again 
and  again  of  his  little  children  ....  until  Christ  be  formed 
in  them,  how  much  more  the  Mother  of  Christ?  For  she  her- 
self desires  to  form  her  only  Begotten  in  all  the  children  of 
adoption  ....  and  she  is  in  labor  of  them  all  daily  .... 
until  they  meet  into  the  perfect  man,  into  the  measure  of  the 
fullness  of  the  age  of  her  Son."  See  Abbot  Guerric's  Sei^mona 
on  the  Assumption. 

It  is  this  beautiful  thought,  then,  which  runs  through  both 
^lontfort's  Treatises  on  our  Blessed  Lady,  and  hardly  an  ex- 


304  Ii'BE,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

presBion  occurs  in  either  of  them  which  may  not  he  found  in 
other  approved  authors.  As  Clirist  hecame  Incarnate,  and  was 
horn  of  God  the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  Mary,  so  also  lie  is  formed 
hy  both  in  the  souls  of  the  regenerate.  It  is  a  first  principle 
of  Christian  theology  that  the  Holy  Ghost  differs  from  the 
other  Divine  Persons,  in  that  He  has  no  Divine  P'ecundity. 
The  Father  generates  the  Son ;  the  Father  and  Son,  by  one 
undivided  spiration,  produce  the  Holy  Ghost;  but  He  pro- 
duces no  Divine  Person.  It  is  only,  therefore,  in  acting  on 
created  things  that  His  Fecundity  exists.  And  now  your 
readers  will  be  able  to  understmd  the  extract  given  above : 
"The  Holy  Ghost  brings  into  fruitfulness  His  action  by 
(Mary)  producing  in  her  and  by  her  Jesus  Christ  in  His  mem- 
bers." An  expansion  of  this  thought  explains  the  other  ex- 
tracts under  this  head  :  Thus :  Certain  pure  souls  permit  Mary 
to  "  strike  her  roots  "  in  them ;  that  is,  to  produce  in  them,  by 
lier  watchful  vigilance  and  unremitting  intercession  for  them 
before  the  Throne  of  Grace,  a  real  though  imperfect  image  of 
herself,  by  the  imitation  and  practice  of  those  virtues  which 
made  her  so  pleasing  to  God.  Will  the  Vicar  deny  that  the 
virtues  of  Faith,  Humility,  and  Purity,  as  illustrated  in  Mary's 
life  are  dear  to  the  Holy  Spirit  ?  Does  he  agree  with  Pusey 
that  God  endowed  her  with  a  "  superhuman,  engraced  beauty 
of  soul  ....  alone  in  His  whole  creation  ? "  Then  why  does 
he  stumble  ?  By  a  very  familiar  figure  of  speech,  Mary  is  said 
to  "  strike  her  roots  "  (words  of  Ecclesiasticus,  ch.  24)  in  pure 
hearts,  because  her  name  is  a  synonym  for  all  the  glories  of 
divine  grace  that  can  embellish  a  human  s»ul,  and  of  which 
she  herself  was  so  conspicuous  an  example.  When  the  Holy 
Ghost  sees  that  Mary  has  thus  taken  root,  or  (to  use  Montfort's 
expression)  when  He  sees  Mary  in  those  souls.  He  flies  to  them 
and  performs  the  "startling  wonder"  of  forming  Christ 
within  them.  "  She  and  the  Holy  Ghost  produce  in  the  soul 
extraordinary  things ;  and,  when  the  Holy  Ghost  finds  Mary 
in  a  soul  He  flies  there."  In  other  words,  sanctity  in  its  germs 
is  attributed  by  Montfort  to  Mary's  intercession  on  behalf  of 
souls  desirous  of  imitating  her  virtues.  In  its  maturity,  how- 
ever, it  is  described  as  the  formation  of  Jesus  Christ  in  the 


A    l.EJOINDEK.  305 

soul,  through  the  joint  agency  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  Mary. 
She  watchfully  intercedes ;  He,  in  answer  to  her  prayer,  puts 
forth  His  highest  efficacy  in  training  and  nurturing  the  soul, 
and  80  the  coni])lete  image  of  her  Son  is  more  and  more  effect- 
ually produced  within  it. 

But  what  wonder  is  there  in  all  this?  If  the  Holy  Ghost 
overshadowed  Mary  with  love  imspeakable  in  her  little  house 
at  Nazareth  on  that  midnight  of  the  New  Creation,  what 
wonder  that  the  heavenly  Dove  should  also  fiy  and  find  a  rest- 
ing-place in  those  elect  souls  in  which  Mary  "  has  tul-en  root,^" 
and  with  which  the  Catholic  Churcli  has  ever  been  resplendent  ? 
For  what,  after  all,  is  the  great  work  of  the  sanctitication  of  the 
souls  of  men,  but  the  Incarnation  of  Christ  in  each  of  them, 
by  which  they  are  made  "  flesh  of  His  flesh  and  bone  of  His 
bone  ?  "  Now,  if  St.  Paul  could  say  to  the  Galatians :  "  My 
little  children,  of  whom  I  am  in  labor  again,  until  Christ  be 
formed  in  you ;"  and  if  he  could  say  to  the  Corinthians  that 
he  had  "begotten  them  in  Gospel,"  and  to  Philemon  that  he 
had  "  begotten  Onesimus  in  his  bonds,"  why  should  a  con- 
ceited, spiritually  mole-eyed  Vicar,  who  never  read  a  page  of 
his  book,  cast  stones  at  so  holy  a  servant  of  God  as  Montfort,  for 
saying  that  Christ  is  formed  in  our  souls  by  Mary,  who  is  His 
Mother  and  our  Mother ;  and  that  she  watches  over  His  growth 
in  us,  and  our  growth  in  Him,  until  we  grow  "  unto  the  per- 
fect man,  unto  the  measure  of  the  age  of  the  fullness  of  Christ," 
as  lovingly  and  tenderly  as  she  watched  over  Him,  as  He 
"  advanced  in  wisdom  and  age  and  grace  before  God  and  men  "  ? 
Will  the  intelligence  of  this  community  stand  it,  that  "educated 
English  gentlemen  "  so  called, — graduates  of  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge, if  you  will, — dare  undertake  to  instruct  the  public  by 
ignorant  criticisms  on  books  they  have  never  read,  of  whose 
doctrines  they  are  profoundly  ignorant,  and  by  insulting  as- 
saults upon  a  creed  whose  articles  they  but  ape  and  mimic  in 
their  attempts  to  eke  out  the  merest  theological  existence  ? 

11.  "According  to  that  word,  'The  Kingdom  of  God  is 
within  you,' — in  like  manner  the  kingdom  of  our  Blessed  Lady 
is  principally  in  the  interior  of  a  man,  that  is  to  say,  his  soul." 
Thus  the  Yicar  after  Pusey.     He  takes  a  scrap  right  out  of 


306  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

the  middle  of  a  sentence.     Here  is  the  extract  in  full  from 
Montfort : 

"Mary  is  the  Queen  of  heaven  and  earth,  by  grace,  as  Jesus  is 
the  King  of  them  by  nature  and  by  conquest.  Now,  as  the  King- 
dom of  Jesus  Christ  consists  principally  in  the  heart  and  interior 
of  a  man — according  to  that  word,  '  Tlie  Kingdom  of  God  is  within 
you,' — in  like  manner  the  Kingdom  of  our  Blessed  Lady  is  princi- 
pally in  the  interior  of  a  man,  that  is  to  say,  his  soul ;  and  it  is 
principally  in  souls  that  she  is  more  glorified  with  her  son  than  in 
all  visible  creatui-es,  and  that  we  can  call  her,  as  the  Sauits  do,  the 
Queen  of  hearts." 

These  beautiful  sentiments  have  already  been  fully  eluci- 
dated, but  I  give  them  for  the  purpose  of  considering  the  07ie 
quotation  made  from  the  Baccolta  by  the  Yicar  in  his  iirst 
letter.  This  would  appear  to  be  so  strong  as  to  set  all  his 
"  true  Catholic  "  zeal  ablaze.  In  the  Vicar's  quotation  occur 
these  vs'ords,  apropos  of  Mary's  birth  :  "  We  pray  thee  'vvith  all 
fervent  love,  be  thou  born  again  in  spirit  in  our  souls,  through 
thy  most  holy  love,  ....  rekindle  in  our  hearts  the  fire  of  thy 
love,  and  bid  all  virtues  blossom  there  which  may  cause  us  to 
find  more  and  more  favor  in  thy  gracious  eyes."  The  Vicar 
says  this  prayer  "  attributes  to  the  Virgin  an  entrance  into  our 
souls !  "  [See  his  third  "  Stricture  "  in  the  closing  paragraphs.] 
And  he  further  says  that  "  even  Newman,  honest  though  he 
fain  would  be,  does  attempt  to  '  explain  away '  this  prayer, 
.  .  .  .  and  wisely  overlooks  others  in  the  ^accoZto  equally  bad." 
What  idiotic  impertinence !  Now  mark  you.  Only  a  few 
lines  before,  with  the  most  barefaced  suppression  of  the  truth, 
as  I  will  show,  he  represents  Father  Newman  as  deploring 
''the  devotions  and  instructions  concerning  the  office  and 
worship  of  the  Virgin  being  introduced  from  Italy  into 
England." 

What  will  your  readers  say  when  I  tell  them,  that  the  most 
beautifully  extreme  book  on  devotion  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  in 
use  among  Catholics  throughout  the  world  is  the  Raccolta,  and 
that  the  best  translation,  from  the  Italian,  is  that  made  by  that 
genuine  Oxford  scholar,  Father  St.  John  of  the  Birmingham 
Oratory,  under  Father  Newman's  own  direction.     A  new  edi- 


A    ItKJOINDER.  807 

tion  lias  just  been  issued  with  tlie  re-impr'imatur  of  Leo  XIIL, 
on  whose  accession  "  wiser  counsels "'  were  to  prevail,  as  the 
sapient  "  Priest  of  the  Mission  Chapel "  informed  the  world. 
Look  now  at  the  Vicar's  "muddle."  Wliy  should  Father 
Newman  attempt  to  "  explain  away  "  a  prayer  which  the  "  Mis- 
sion Chapel "  critic  says  "  attributes  to  the  A'  irgin  an  entrance 
into  our  souls,"  when  no  such  prayer  exists  J  lie  admits  im- 
mediately before  this,  that  Father  Newman  protests  against 
"  that  teaching."  And  so  he  does ;  nay  more,  he  denies  the 
existence  of  any  such  doctrine,  for  he  says :  "  (Mary's)  presence 
is  above,  not  on  earth ;  her  office  is  exte7'nal,  not  roithin  lis. 
Her  work  is  not  one  of  ministration  toward  us ;  her  power  is 
indirect.  It  is  her  prayers  that  avail,  and  her  prayers  are 
effectual  by  the^a^  of  Him  who  is  our  all  in  all."  IIow,  then, 
can  Father  Newman  be  said  to  attempt  to  "explain  away" 
teaching  which  he  denies  has  any  existence  at  all  ?  Of  course, 
neither  the  prayer  from  the  liaccolta  nor  Montfort  teaches  any 
such  doctrine  as  the  entrance  or  presence  of  Mary  in  the  soul. 
The  thought  here  is  allied  with  what  I  have  already  said  about 
Mary's  Divine  Maternity  and  the  analogies  based  upon  it.  In 
the  extract  un'^'  j:'  consideration  Montfort  refers  to  two  things. 
On  the  one  hand  to  the  implicit  thought  of  Mary,  which  he 
considers  will  always  be  present  to  the  mind  of  one  who  faith- 
fully practices  the  devotions  he  recommends,  and  endeavors  to 
imitate  her  virtues,  especially  her  holy  purity.  On  the  otlier 
hand,  and  as  if  by  way  of  requittal,  Mary  exercises  (so  Mont- 
fort thinks)  a  very  special  intluence,  and  })ractises  a  very 
si)ecial  watchfulness  by  her  intercession,  over  such  a  faithful 
soul.  In  a  word,  the  keynote  of  his  doctrine  is  simply  that  of 
St.  Paul  himself  in  the  text  already  quoted :  "  My  little  chil- 
dren, of  whom  I  am  in  labor  again,  until  Christ  be  formed  in 
you"  (Gal.  iv.  19).  If  the  Vicar  would  make  this  profound 
thought  a  matter  for  his  pious  contemi)lation,  instead  of  his 
ignorant  criticism,  his  "  sermons  to  men  only  "  on  some  of  the 
lost  virtues  might  bear  some  fruit. 

It  will  be  in  order  here  to  point  out  the  Vicar's  barefaced 
suppression  of  the  truth,  and  to  protest  against  his  monstrous 
misrepresentation  of  Father  Newman.     I  refer  to  the  close  of 


308  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

the  third  "  Stricture."  He  there  represents  Father  Newman 
as  saying,  of  expressions  quoted  by  Pusey  from  CathoHc 
writers,  as  follows :  "  Sentiments  such  as  these  I  never  knew 
till  I  read  them  in  your  book,  nor,  as  I  think,  do  the  vast 

majority  of  English  Catholics  know  them They  seem  to 

nie  like  a  had  dream They  defy  all  the  loci  theologici. 

....  They  do  hut  scare  and  confuse  me." 

Now  what  is  it  that  Father  Newman  really  said  in  the  para- 
graph of  his  letter  in  reply  to  Pusey's^/'*^  volume,  from  which 
the  Vicar  quotes  ?  He  was  commenting  on  certain  passages 
quoted  by  Pusey  from  St.  Liguori,  from  Montfort,  from  Sala- 
zar,  and  others.  Your  readers  know  that  Pusey's  quotations 
were  "  scraps "  picked  out,  and  separated  from  their  context. 
Father  Newman  had  never  read  in  their  context  the  passages 
cited  by  Pusey.  He  therefore  said  (1)  that  he  put  them  away 
from  him  "  when  taken  in  their  literal  and  absolute  sense,  as 
any  Protestant  would  naturally  take  them,  and  as  the  writers 
douhtless  did  not  use  themP  He  said  (2)  that  these  ])assage8, 
"  as  they  lie  in  Dr.  Pxisey^'s  pa<jes,^^  will  be  understood  hy 
Englishmen  of  the  nineteenth  century  as  containing  certain 
propositions  which  he  drew  out.  He  said,  however,  (3)  that 
he  "  knew  nothing  of  the  originals  "y  and  (4)  that  he  was  not 
speaking  unfavorably  of  all  of  these  passages  "««  they  are 
found  in  their  authors^'*  because  he  was  confident  that  they 
did  not  mean  what  Pusey  thought.  "  I  will  have  nothing  to 
do  with  statements,  which  can  only  be  explained,  by  being 
explained  away.  I  do  not,  however,  speak  of  these  statements, 
as  they  are  found  in  their  authors,  for  I  know  nothing  of  the 
originals,  and  cannot  believe  that  they  have  meant  what  you 
say  ;  hut  I  take  them  a^  they  lie  in  your  pages"  So  far  then 
was  Father  Newman  from  speaking  of  a  "  Certain  set  devoted 
to  extreme  views"  as  the  Vicar  scandalously  misrepresents 
him,  that  he  actually  expressed  his  disbelief  in  the  existence  of 
any  such  "  Set.^^  Does  the  Vicar  believe  Father  Newman's 
own  testimon}'^  as  to  Father  Newman's  own  meaning,  or  does 
he  not  ?  If  he  does,  how  can  he  be  excused  from  wilful  sup- 
pression and  misrepresentation  ?  If  he  does  not,  what  reasons 
can  he  give  for  his  disbelief  ?     Father  Newman  expressly  said 


A  Hejoindeb.  309 

that  he  had  not  examined  Pusey's  quotations,  and  "knew 
nothing  of  the  originals."  Is  it  prohahle  tliat  lie  would  have 
expressed  severe  censure  on  passages  taken  from  Catholic 
M'orks,  which  he  had  not  even  seen  in  their  original  shape  and 
in  their  context  ?  Such  is  not  Father  Newman's  habit — he 
leaves  that  to  his  maligners  and  the  Littledale  brood  generally. 


LETTER  XXVI. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  continue  my  examination  of  the  Vicar's  charges  of 
"  Infidelity,"  "  Apostasy  "  and  "  Idolatry." 

In  my  last  letter  I  pointed  out  that  Father  Newman,  in  his 
letter  to  Pusey,  contented  hhnself  with  protesting  against  the 
meaning  attached  by  Pusey  to  the  extracts  made  by  him  from 
several  writers.  How  easily  the  great  Cardinal  could  have  de- 
fended these  illustrious  men  from  the  unfounded  calunmies  of 
Pusey,  reiterated  by  the  Vicar,  your  readers  are  now  aware 
from  the  simple  analysis  of  their  language  which  I  have  given. 
Fifteen  years  before,  however.  Father  Newman  had  written 
down  the  philosophy  of  the  cowardly  dishonesty  of  the  Vicar's 
mode  of  controversy.     Here  are  his  words : 

"  Protestants  judge  of  the  apostles'  doctrine  by  '  texts,'  as 
they  are  connnonly  called,  taken  from  Scripture,  and  nothing 
more;  and  they  judge  of  our  doctrine,  too,  by  'texts'  taken 
from  our  writings,  and  nothing  more ;  picked  verses,  bits  torn 
from  the  context,  half-sentences,  are  the  warrant  of  the  Prot- 
estant idea  of  what  is  Apostolic  truth  on  the  one  hand,  and  on 
the  other,  of  what  is  Catholic  falsehood.  As  they  have  their 
chips  and  fragments  of  St.  Paul  and  St.  John,  so  have  they 
their  chips  and  fragments  of  Suarez  and  Bellarmine ;  and  out 
of  the  former  they  make  to  themselves  their  own  Christian 
religion,  and  out  of  the  latter  our  anti-Christian  superstition. 
They  do  not  ask  themselves  sincerely,  as  a  matter  of  fact  and 
history,  What  did  the  apostles  teach  them  ?    Nor  do  they  ask 


310  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

sincerely,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  What  do  Catholics  teach  now  ? 
They  judge  of  the  apostles  and  they  judge  of  us  hy  scraps, 
and  on  these  scraps  they  exercise  their  private  judgment, — 
that  is,  their  prejudice,  ....  and  their  assumed  principles, 
....  and  the  process  ends  in  their  bringing  forth,  out  of 
their  scraps  from  the  apostles,  what  they  call  'Scriptural 
religion,'  and  out  of  their  scraps  from  our  theologians  what 
they  call  Popery. 

"  Catholics,  at  least,  have  a  lively  illustration  and  evidence 
of  the  absurdity  of  Protestant  private  judgment  as  exercised 
on  the  Apostolic  writings,  in  the  visible  fact  of  its  absurdity 
as  exercised  on  themselves.  They,  as  their  forefathers,  the  first 
Christians,  are  a  living  body ;  they,  too,  preach,  dispute,  cate- 
chise, converse  with  innumerable  tongues,  saying  the  same 
thing  as  our  adversaries  confess  all  over  the  earth.  Well  then, 
you  would  think  the  obvious  w^ay  was,  if  they  would  know 
what  we  really  teach,  to  come  and  ask  us,  to  talk  with  us,  to 
try  to  enter  into  our  views  and  to  attend  to  our  teaching.  Not 
at  all ;  they  do  not  dream  of  doing  so ;  they  take  their  '  texts '; 
they  have  got  the  cut-and-driod  specimens  from  our  divines, 
which  the  Protestant  tradition  hands  down  from  generation  to 
generation,  and,  as  by  the  aid  of  their  verses  from  Scripture, 
they  think  they  understand  the  Gospel  better  than  the  lirst 
Christians,  so  by  the  help  of  these  choice  extracts  from  our 
works,  they  think  they  understand  our  doctrine  better  than  we 
do  ourselves.  They  will  not  allow  us  to  explain  our  own 
books.  So  sure  are  they  of  their  knowledge,  and  so  superior 
to  us,  that  they  have  no  difficulty  in  setting  us  right  and  in 
accounting  for  onr  contradicting  tliem. 

"  Thus,  Protestants  judge  us  by  their  'texts';  and  by  ' texts ' 
I  do  not  mean  only  passages  from  our  writers,  but  all  those 
samples  of  whatever  kind,  historical,  ecclesiastical,  biographical, 
or  political,  carefully  prepared,  improved,  and  finished  off  by 
successive  artists  for  the  occasion,  which  they  think  so  much 
more  worthy  of  credit  and  reliance  as  to  facts,  than  us  and  our 
word,  who  are  in  the  very  communion  to  which  those  texts 
relate.  Some  good  persoTial  knowledge  of  us,  and  intercourse 
with  us,  not  in  the  way  of  controversy  and  criticism,  but  what 


A  Rejoinder.  311 

is  prior — viz.,  in  the  way  of  sincere  inquiry  in  order  to  ascer- 
tain how  things  really  lie — such  knowledge  and  intercourse 
would  be  worth  all  the  conclusions,  however  elaborate  and 
subtle,  from  rumors,  false  witnessings,  suspicions,  roman- 
tic scenes,  morsels  of  history,  morsels  of  theology,  morsels  of 
our  miraculous  legends,  morsels  of  our  devotional  writers, 
morsels  from  our  individual  members,  whether  unlearned  or 
intemperate,  which  are  the  text  of  the  traditional  Protestant 

view  against  us Yet  any  one  is  thought  qualiiied  to 

attack  or  to  instruct  a  Catholic  in  matters  of  his  religion  :  a 
country  gentleman,  a  navy  captain,  a  half-pay  officer,  with  time 
on  his  hands,  never  having  seen  a  Catholic  or  a  Catholic  cere- 
monial, or  a  Catholic  treatise  in  his  life,  is  competent  b}'  means 
of  one  or  two  periodicals  and  tracts,  and  a  set  of  Protestant 
extracts  against  Popery,  to  teach  the  Pope  his  own  religion, 
and  to  refute  a  council." 

In  these  words  your  readers  have  as  perfect  a  picture  of  the 
Vicar's  "  Strictures  "  as  can  possibly  be  drawn — and  they  will 
ask  for  no  better  authority  than  John  Henry  Newman.  In 
addition,  I  have  fully  illustrated  their  truth. 

12.  To  return  to  the  Vicars  quotations.  In  the  "  ISTovena 
for  the  Feast  of  our  Lady's  Nativity,"  referred  to  in  his  first 
Letter,  occur  these  words :  "  We  hail  thee,  dear  child,  and  we 
humhly  toorship  Thy  most  holy  body,  &c."  The  italics  are 
his.  So  throughout  the  "■  Strictures,"  he  emphasizes  the  word 
"  worship''^  and  "  idolatroxis  worship  of  the  Virgin  "  as  apj)lied 
to  Catholic  devotion  to  the  holy  Mother  of  God.  In  the  open- 
ing paragraph  of  his  first  "Stricture"  he  professed  to  have 
"some  experience  with  the  tricks  of  controversialists."  His 
acts  certainly  do  not  belie  his  words.  In  the  matter  now  under 
consideration  he  is  guilty  of  one  of  the  most  contemptible  of 
controversial  tricks.  He  must  know  that  by  the  word  "  woi*- 
ship,"  his  Protestant  readers  are  generally  led  to  understand 
adoration^  in  which  sense  he  must  also  know  that  Catholics 
do  not  worship  either  the  Blessed  Virgin,  or  any  other  saint. 
A  great  part  of  the  objection  to  the  language  of  Catholic  de- 
votion, made  by  ignorant  or  dishonest  Protestants,  arises  from 
the  practice  of  confining  certains  words  to  their  conventional 


312  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

sense,  instead  of  interpreting  them  according  to  the  intention 
of  the  writer  or  speaker ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  of  restricting 
to  a  secondary  and  technical  use  those  whicli  are  employed  in 
a  more  general  sense.  Thus  there  is  really  no  difference,  in 
fact,  between  the  terms  "  worship  "  and  "  veneration  ";  yet, 
while  mere  human  qualities  are  popularly  considered  to  war- 
rant veneration.  Catholics  are  charged  with  idolatry  who  speak 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin  as  an  object  of  worship — a  charge  the 
more  impertinent  and  insulting  when  we  remember  that 
in  the  words  of  the  marriage  rite,  common  to  Catholics  and 
Protestants,  this  word  is  actually  employed  in  the  sense  of 
"service"  or  "devotion."  The  word  "adoration,"  again,  has 
come  to  be  restricted,  like  that  of  "  prayer,"  to  the  homage 
claimed  by  God  only  ;  though  the  first  according  to  its  etymol- 
ogy need  mean  no  more  than  "  invocation,"  and  the  second, 
though  refused  to  the  Saints,  is  used  without  scruple  in  peti- 
tions to  Parliament  or  the  Legislature.  All  such  words  inean 
only  what  they  are  'meant  to  imply.  They  are  to  he  inter- 
■preted  hy  our  intention,  and  not  our  intention  hy  thetn.  The 
word  "worship,"  then,  in  its  real  old  English  acceptation, 
means  honor  or  respect.  And  so  we  find  it,  used  by  Bishop 
Latimer,  one  of  Littledale's  "miscreants,"  as  follows:  "Take 
Saints  for  inhabitants  of  heaven,  and  worshipping  of  them  for 
praying  to  them.  I  never  denied  but  they  might  be  wor- 
shipped., and  be  our  mediators,  though  not  by  way  of  redemp- 
tion (for  so  Christ  alone  is  a  whole  mediator,  both  for  them 
and  for  us),  yet  by  way  of  intercession."  Do  we  place  magis- 
trates and  members  of  the  Masonic  body,  for  instance,  on  a 
level  with  tlip  Almighty  when  we  address  them  as  "  Worship- 
fuVf  Do  we  believe  that  a  supreme  and  divine  honor  is 
given  to  the  person  to  whom  these  words  of  the  marriage  ser- 
vice are  addressed:  "TT/^/i  my  body  I  thee  worship  f"*  and 
do  not  Protestants  read  in  their  own  Bible  (1  Chronicles  xxix. 
20) :  "  and  all  the  congregation  blessed  the  Lord  God  of  their 
fathers,  and  bowed  down  their  heads,  and  w&rshipped  the  Lard 
and  the  King  f  "  This  may  suflice  on  this  point  for  the  in- 
struction of  candid  Protestants  who  are  in  danger  of  being 
misled  by  such  tricksters  as  the  Vicar.     Catholics  "  worship  " 


A  Eejoindeb.  313 

God  alone,  in  the  ordinary  Protestant  sense  of  that  word,  but 
many  of  our  writers  use  it  to  express  that  honor  and  veneration 
we  pay  to  the  Mother  of  God  and  the  Saints,  because  it  is  a 
most  serviceable  word,  for  which  it  is  very  dithculL  to  find  a 
substitute. 

Let  me  add  a  word  for  the  Vicar's  benefit.     A  few  years 

'  ago  England  was  roused  from  one  end  to  the  other  to  do  its 
utmost  in  honor  of  Shakespeare,  on  tlie  occasion  of  the  tercen- 
tenary of  his  birthday.  A  distinguished  Oxford  professor 
delivered  an  eloquent  address,  which  closed  with  these  words: 
"  May  England  never  be  ashamed  to  show  to  the  world  that 
she  can  love,  that  she  can  admire,  that  she  can  worsh'q)  the 
greatest  of  her  poets."  Would  the  Vicar  denounce  this  as 
idolatry  ?  Not  at  all ;  he  reserves  that  epithet  for  those  whose 
hearts  and  affections  overflow  in  meditation  upon  the  sublime 
thoughts  suggested  by  Mary's  birthday.  The  simple  truth  is 
that  the  sensual  materialism  of  the  man's  thought  ])linds  him 
to  the  beauty  of  things  invisible  and  spiritual  in  the  order  of 
grace.  He  has  no  idea  of  Mary's  position  in  the  divine 
economy  of  man's  redemption  ;  and  while  he  would  applaud 
the  orator  who  worshipped  Shakespeare,  he  has  nothing  but 
insults  and  curses  for  us  who  honor  her,  "whose  being,"  as 
Pusey  beautifully  writes,  "ever  lay  in  God's  eternal  councils, 
who  must  have  been  in  His  divine  mind  when,  in  all  eternity. 
He  contemplated  the  way  in  which  He  should  unite  His 
rational  creation  to  Himself,  redeeming  our  fallen  race ;  from 

■  whom  He,  who  should  be  God  and  Man,  was  to  derive  His 
human  flesh,  and  in  His  sacred  childhood  to  be  subject  to  her." 
13.  "  Perhaps  Romanists  of  these  parts  are  not  aware  that 
the  heretical  teaching  of  Cornelius  a  Lapide  of  old,  concerning 
the  body  and  blood  of  Mary  being  received  with  the  Body  and 
Blood  of  Christ  in  the  Eucharist,  has  been  j^ractically  received 

hy  many  Romanists  in  Europe Newman  condemns 

it ;  but  there  it  is.  Leading  Eomanists  like  Faber,  Oakeley, 
and  Cardinal   Manning  esteem   it,  at   least,  a  worthy,  pious 

opinion Where  such  teaching  will   lead  people  God 

only  knows.     It  is  surely  Romanism  run  mad." 

The  Vicar  here  surpasses  all  his  former  infamies.    From  the 


314:  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

days  of  Cain  it  lias  ever  been,  that  the  nearer  the  hater  of 
the  Catholic  Church  approaches  her  altars  the  more  intense  and 
loathsome  his  hatred  becomes.  The  nearer  he  conies  to  infinite 
purity,  goodness,  nobleness,  love,  the  more  does  his  base  and 
craven  nature  boil  and  seethe  in  its  presence.  And,  it  is  not  a 
hatred  engendered  by  the  reason  of  intelligence,  but  it  is  the 
bitterness  of  human  passion,  of  a  debased  and  poisoned  nature 
under  the  influence  of  a  power  beyond  the  most  sublimated 
rankness  of  mere  flesh  and  blood.  History  repeats  itself  in  the 
"  Priest  of  the  Mission  Church." 

I  ask  your  readers  to  follow  me  while  I  expose  the  iniquity 
and  ignorance  of  the  Yicar  in  his  handling  of  Pusey's  matter. 

A  young  German  ecclesiastic,  named  Oswald,  once  went  the 
extravagant  length  of  maintaining  that  the  body  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin  is  co-present  with  our  Lord's  in  the  Holy  Eucharist. 
Oswald's  book  was  promptly  put  on  the  Index,  and  the  teach- 
ing put  forth  in  it  condemned  by  the  church  as  "  erroneous, 
dangerous,  and  scandalous."  Oswald  "laudably  submitted 
himself"  and  retracted  his  words.  The  instinct  of  a  Catholic 
would  have  anticipated  this  condemnation.  There  is  not  a 
word  to  be  said  in  behalf  of  so  shocking  a  notion,  as  that  our 
Lady's  body,  or  any  part  of  it,  is  co-])resent  in  the  Eucharist. 
It  is  simply  monstrous,  and  the  Catholic  Church,  the  jealous 
and  sleepless  guardian  of  God's  truth,  was  not  slow  to  so  de- 
clare it,  though,  I  suppose,  very  few  even  of  Catholic  students 
ever  heard  of  it.  Yet  this  is  the  doctrine  which,  the  Vicar 
infamously  declares,  "  has  been  practically  received  by  many 
Romanists  in  Europe."  I  know  nothing  that  could  do  justice 
to  the  iniquitous  recklessness  of  such  a  loathsome  calumny, 
short  of  the  scourge  of  cords  so  effectually  applied  by  our 
Divine  Lord  to  the  desecrators  of  the  Temple.  Has  he  any 
perso7ial  knowledge  to  justify  such  a  statement  ?  Of  course 
not.  Does  he  offer  a  particle  of  evidence  in  support  of  it  i 
Not  at  all.  Can  he  produce  any  ?  Xot  a  tittle.  Where  did 
he  get  the  materials  out  of  which  he  manufactured  it  ?  Let 
us  see. 

In  i\\e  first  volume  of  the  Eirenicon,  Pusey  quoted  Oswald's 
book  as  authority  for  the  proposition  under  consideration.    He 


A  Kejoinder.  315 

also  said  that  he  himself  noticed  it  in  a  letter  written  to  Doctor 
Jelf  about  twenty-tive  years  before,  as  a  "  belief,  said  to  exist 
among  the  poorer  people  of  Rome";  but  then,  to  Pusey's 
honor,  he  frankly  confesses,  in  a  note,  p.  169,  that  for  this 
statement  he  had  only  the  authority  of  a  friend  who  had  been 
staying  in  Rome!  This  is  the  miserable  evidence  on  which 
even  Pusey  bases  the  rubbish  of  which  the  Eirenicon  is  so  full. 
The  important  points  in  his  argument  he  tills  up  with  hearsay 
and  private  reports,  which  can  tell  upon  the  credulous,  but 
escape  the  possibility  of  exposure.  Here,  however,  your 
readers  have  the  "  whole  cloth  "  out  of  which  the  Vicar  makes 
his  infamous  calumny,  that  Oswald's  monstrous  doctrine  "  has 
been  practically  received  by  numy  Romanists  in  Europe." 
Compare  this  assertion  with  its  source  in  the  Eirenicon,  and  it 
will  be  difficult  to  dismiss  the  suspicion  that  some  unclean 
spirit  must  be  riding  this  unfortunate  man  to  death. 

But  now  mark  you.  It  was  promptly  pointed  out  to  Pusey 
that  Oswald's  doctrine  was  reprobated  and  condemned  by  the 
Catholic  Church.  Thereupon,  in  the  second  volume  of  the 
Eirenicon,  he  pleaded  ignorance  of  the  condemnation,  apolo- 
gized and  explained.  Here  are  his  words :  "  I  am  thankful  to 
hear  that  (Oswald's)  book  has  been  condemned.  Of  course, 
had  I  known  this,  I  should  not  have  quoted  him.  But  I  think  it 
hard  to  be  blamed  for  not  knowing  ihis,  or  for  not  looking  in 
the  Index  to  ascertain  the  fact,  when  I  had  no  ground  to 
imagine  it."  About  Pusey's  blunder  and  its  correction  the 
honest,  truth-loving  Yicar  says  not  a  word.  He  is  bound, 
however,  that  we  shall  not  have  the  benefit  of  it.  lie  sup- 
presses all  mention  of  Oswald,  and  practicos  one  of  his  con- 
troversial tricks  by  attributing  Oswald's  doctrine  to  Cornelius 
a  Lapide,  Faber,  Oakeley,  and  Cardinal  Manning. 

What  a  muddle!  Here,  however,  he  is  not  entirely  to 
blame,  since  knowing  nothing  about  the  matter  himself,  he  but 
limps  along  after  Pusey,  and  falls  into  the  ditch  with  his 
master.  The  fact  is,  that  Pusey  confused  Oswald's  condemned 
tenet  with  another  which  differs  from  it  in  every  relevant  par- 
ticular. Various  Catholic  writers  have  held  that  a  certain  por- 
tion of  matter,  which  once  belonged  to  the  Blessed  Virgin,  now 


316  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

belongs,  unchanged,  to  lier  Son ;  and  is  therefore  present  in 
tlie  Eucharist.  For  instance,  Canon  Oakeley  says  that  "  all 
which  was  once  the  Blessed  Virgin's  is  infinitely  exalted  in  the 
human  nature  of  our  Lord  by  its  union  with  the  Second  Per- 
son of  the  Blessed  Trinity,  and  is  7iow  no  otherwise  hers,  than 
as  it  was  from  her  that  our  Lord  condescended  to  take  that 
nature."  And  again  he  says :  "  In  the  same  sense,  surely  in 
which  we  say  that  the  blood  of  our  parents  and  ancestors  How 
in  our  veins  (those  physical  changes  notwithstanding)  and 
with  the  necesscu'y  Ihnitatwn  expressed  above,  we  may  also 
say,  and  truly  say,  that  the  blood  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  was  in 
her  Son  from  first  to  last,  and  is,  therefore,  in  that  wondrous 
communication  of  Himself  which  He  makes  to  us  in  the 
Blessed  Eucharist."  A  Lapide,  as  quoted  by  Pusey  himself, 
says :  "  That  flesh  of  Christ,  hefore  it  was  detached,  ivas  the 
own  flesh  of  the  Blessed  Virgin."  These  words  the  Vicar 
suppresses  in  his  quotation  from  Pusey ;  and  they  ai-e  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  the  true  meaning  of  a  Lapide's  words  as 
quoted.  The  old  trick !  To  this  opinion  Father  Faber  also 
inclines  and  he  cites  in  its  behalf  a  vision  of  the  great  St. 
Ignatius.  Even  that  mighty  intellect — Suarez,  equal  to  the 
whole  Lambeth  Conference,  holds  the  same  opinion.  The 
Vicar  says  "Newman  condemns  it."  Another  calumny — 
Newman  does  not  even  so  much  as  allude  to  it.  Of  course  he 
condemns  Oswald's  doctrine,  but  the  radical  distinction  between 
that  and  the  tenet  professed  by  the  writers  just  quoted  is 
manifest.  Yet  even  this  is  no  Catholic  doctr'ine,  though  ac- 
cording to  Aristotelian  Physics  it  is  nature's  own  order.  To 
me,  however,  a  true  Catholic  metaphysic  of  the  Incarnation 
supplies  any  defects  in  "  the  Philosopher's  "  physical  science, 
and  argues  the  truth  and  beauty  of  a  Lapide's  sentiment. 

If  then  there  are  good  speculative  grounds  for  holding  this 
tenet,  the  pious  inferences  drawn  by  a  Lapide  are  certainly 
most  apt  and  fitting,  and  heartily  welcome  to  an  orthodox  if 
not  to  a  "  true  Catholic."  Now  this  is  not  the  place  for  dis- 
cussing nice  questions  of  physiology  and  chemistry,  but  would 
the  Vicar  be  good  enough  to  inform  the  "  Romanists  of  these 
parts  "  by  what  authority  he  pronounces  the  "  pious  opinion  " 


A  Rejoindeu.  317 

of  Oakeley,  Fabur,  and  a  Lapido  to  be  "heretical."  He  can 
get  no  assistance  from  Pusey  liere.  While  waiting  for  the 
light,  let  nie  assure  your  readers  that  these  ^STiters  are  as  far 
removed  from  upholding  any  true  co-presence  of  Mary  in  the 
Blessed  Eucharist,  as  Ritualists  are  from  having  any  Real 
Presence. 

14.  "Romanism  in  this  diocese,"  the  Vicar  thinks,  is  "  w/7/ 
Loto  church  indeed."  And  he  expresses  his  solicitude  for  us 
in  these  words:  "May  the  cultus  of  Mary  never  so  develop 
here  as  to  make  it  possible  to  distinguish  the  English  and 
Roman  churches,  sis  they  are  distinguished  in  Southern  India 
and  Ceylon,  as  "Jesus  churches"  and  "Mary  churches." 

Here  again  he  only  repeat?  Pusey.  Now,  I  can  understand 
Catholic  churches  being  called  "Mary  churches"  by  some 
ignorant  extern  or  Ritualist,  who  knows  nothing  about  the 
presence  of  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  and  who  sees  a  large  image 
of  our  Blessed  Lady  surrounded  by  eager  suppliants,  engaged 
in  prayer  and  meditation  to  their  inestimable  spiritual  advan- 
tage ;  but  by  what  possible  indication  he  could  be  led  to  call 
an  Anglican  edifice  a  "  Jesus  church  "  it  utterly  bewilders  one 
to  conjecture.  Is  it  in  an  Anglican  edifice,  then,  that  he 
would  see  a  colossal  image  of  Christ  crucified,  and  a  crucifix 
placed  conspicuously  over  each  of  the  numerous  altars  'i  Look 
at  the  disgraceful  scene  being  enacted  to-day  in  England  in 
what  is  called  the  "  Reredos  case."  It  is  simply  a  question 
whether  an  image  of  our  Divine  Lord  on  the  Cross  shall  be  toler- 
ated on  the  altar  or  in  the  sanctuary.  The  Bishop  of  London 
refused  to  interfere,  and  now  the  Dean  and  Chapter  of  St. 
Paul's  have  been  compelled  to  appeal  to  the  Attorney-General. 
This  is  perfectly  proper.  The  Royal  Arins  or  a  bust  of  her 
gracious  Majesty,  the  Queen,  who  is  the  head  of  the  English 
Estabhshment,  instead  of  the  Crucifix !  Of  course ;  and  the 
first  law  officer  of  the  State  js  the  proper  person  to  look  after 
the  Sovereign's  rights  in  this  regard,  and  to  help  the  bishop  to 
decide  the  question.  "  Give  to  Caesar  what  belongs  to  Caesar  " 
— and  everything  "  belongs  to  Caesar  "  in  the  English  State 
Church.  Again:  At  the  so-called  Reformation,  altars  were 
everywhere  converted  into  communion  tables.     The  very  woid 


318  Il'SK,    Il'SA,    Il'SUM. 

"altar"  is  not  to  be  foinul  in  tliu  authorized  J?ook  of  Cuniinon 
Prayer,  but  a  " conveiiioiit  and  decent  table"  is  ])rovided  by 
the  82nd  Canon.  In  the  celebrated  ciwes  of  Lidddl  versus 
^Vedert(m  and  Lhldell  versus  Bml,,  the  Privy  ('(juncll,  which 
is  above  the  Lambeth  Conference,  decided  that  in  the  Church 
of  Eii<i;land  there  was  "  no  lon/^er  an  altar  of  sacrifice,  but 
merely  a  table  at  which  the  conmiunicants  were  to  partake  of 
tiie  Lord's  Sui)])er ;  that  the  term  altar  is  never  used  to  de- 
scribe it,  and  there  is  an  express  declaration  at  the  end  of  the 
service  against  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  with  which 
the  ideas  of  an  altar  and  sacrifice  are  closely  connected."  In 
a  word,  take  out  of  the  "  Mission  Church,"  so  called,  what  is 
there  contrary  to  ''  lawful  authority  "  in  the  Church  of  England, 
and  one  nnght  as  well  give  the  appellation  "Jesus  Church"  to 
a  Moluunmedau  Mosque  so  far  as  visible  emblems  are  cou- 
cerned. 


LETTER  XXVII. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSinU— A    REJOINDER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  conclude  to-day  my  demolition  of  the  Vicar — his 
charges  of  "  Impiety,"  "  Infidelity,"  "  Apostasy  "  and  "  Idola- 
try ";  and  also  my  humble  vindication  of  the  position,  theolog- 
ical and  devotional,  assigned  by  the  Catholic  Church  to  the 
ever-blessed  Mother  of  Jesus  in  the  Christian  scheme. 

15.  "In  my  copy  of  the  Breviary,"  says  the  Vicar,  "is  a 
small  picture  of  the  Virgin  crowned  with  thorns." 

What  a  revolting  profanation  is  the  meer  at  the  Sorrowful 
Mother  expressed  in  these  words!  I  may  not  dare  make  any 
commentary  on  it,  I  beg  permission,  however,  from  your 
outraged  readers,  to  offer  a  few  reflections. 

To  expiate  the  crimes  of  Saul  and  his  people,  and  arrest  the 
famine  which  they  had  brought  upon  the  nation,  it  was  de- 
creed that  seven  of  his  children  should  be  crucified.     They 


A    lilCJUl.NDEU.  {JiO 

wore  ace()r(lin<^ly  crucified  "upon  a  hill  before  the  Lord." 
Two  of  tlie  victims  were  the  t^uuH  of  Ilespha.  Let  us  see  the 
iiinthcr's  place  at  sucli  a  scene  of  a^ony  and  ignoniiuy  :  "  And 
Jiospha,  the  (hiuj^hter  of  Aja,  took  haircloth  and  spread  it 
under  her  upon  the  rock  from  the  l)e<;inning  of  the  harvest  till 
water  dropped  ujion  them  out  of  heaven ;  and  suffered  neither 
the  birds  to  tear  them  by  day  nor  the  beasts  by  ni<i;ht.  And  it 
was  told  to  David  what  Kespha  had  done"  (2  Kings  xxi.  1(»). 
How  inexpressibly  touching  is  this  picture  of  maternal  affec- 
tii)ii— that  patient,  calm,  resigned  breast,  which  endures  un- 
subdued shame,  grief,  fatigue,  not  to  speak  of  the  quivering 
agony  of  a  mother's  heart,  witnessing  torment  in  the  best- 
beloved — all  from  that  very  love.  Appreliending  hi/  the 
stdndard  of  nature,  i\\e  coimnunion  of  eye  and  heart,  if  not 
of  word,  Avhich  took  place  between  Eespha  on  lier  rocky  seat 
and  Armoni  on  his  cross,  would  the  Vicar  blaspheme  against 
any  artistic  portrayal  of  the  mother's  sorrow  I  Then  change 
the  scene  to  Calvary,  and  recall  the  closing  scene  of  Mary's 
Son,  crucitied  on  a  hill  before  the  Lord  for  expiation  of  others 
sins.  "  There  stood  by  the  cross  of  .Tesns,  His  mother.''  Let 
that  great,  human-hearted  preacher,  Dr.  Tahnage,  describe  this 
picture : 

"O  woman,  ni  your  hour  of  anguish,  whom  do  you  want  with 
you?  Mother.  Young'  man,  in  your  hour  of  trouble  whom  do  you 
Avant  to  console  you?  Mother.  If  tlie  mother  of  Jesus  could  have 
only  taken  those  bleeding  feet  into  her  lap!  If  she  might  have 
taken  the  dying  head  on  her  bosom !  If  she  might  have  said  to 
him :  '  It  will  soon  be  over,  Jesus,  it  will  soon  be  over,  and  we  will 
meet  again,  and  it  wnll  be  all  well.'  But  no;  she  dared  not  come 
up  .so  close.  They  would  have  struck  her  back  with  hammei's. 
They  would  have  kicked  her  down  the  lull.  There  can  be  no  allevi- 
ation at  all.  .Tcsus  must  sutfer,  and  Mary  must  look.  I  sui)pose 
she  thought  of  the  birth-hour  in  Bethlehem.  I  suppose  she  thought 
of  that  time  when,  with  her  boy  in  her  bosom  she  hastened  on  in 
the  darkness  in  her  flight  toward  Egypt.  I  suppose  she  thought  of 
his  boyhood,  when  he  was  the  joy  of  her  heart.  I  suppose  she 
thought  of  the  thousand  kindnesses  He  had  done  her,  not  foi-sakmg 
her  nor  forgetting  her  even  in  His  last  moments ;  but  turning  to 
John  and  saying:  '  There  is  mother;  take  her  with  you.  She  is  old 
now.    She  cannot  help  herself.    Do  for  her  just  as  I  would  have 


320  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

done  for  her  if  I  had  lived.  Be  very  tender  and  gentle  with  her. 
Behold  thy  Mother.'  She  thought  it  all  over,  and  there  is  no  mem- 
ory Hke  a  mother's  memoiy,  and  there  is  no  woe  like  a  mother's 
woe." 

Would  Dr.  Talraage,  though  no  "  true  Catholic,"  object  to 
a  crown  of  thorns  as  litly  symbolizing  tlie  sorrows  and  trials 
of  the  mother  of  such  a  Son?  Certainly  not.  Our  Divine 
Lord  wiispar  excellence  the  "Man  of  Sorrows,"  and  bore  His 
Crown  of  Thorns ;  but  surely  His  blessed  Mother,  in  her  own 
unapproachable  degree,  was  the  "  Mother  of  Sorrows  "  and  had 
her  Crown  of  Thorns.  Would  the  Vicar  be  advised  to  spend 
some  time  during  next  "  Lent "  in  meditation  on  the  "  Stabat 
Mater  "  ?  He  might  then  "  get  up  "  another  "  Sermon  "  with 
less  disgusting  hypocrisy  in  it  than  his  first  contained. 

16.  "It  is,  of  course,  an  abuse  of  (Catholic)  teaching," 
admits  Pusey,  "  when  any  confine  their  prayers  to  the  Blessed 
Virgin."  But  he  adds, —  "A  certain  proportion,  ^V //as  hee^i 
ascertained  by  those  who  have  inquired,  do  stop  short  in  her." 
I  do  not  like  to  place  on  permanent  and  public  record  my 
views  of  such  pitiable  and  ridiculous  rubbish.  Is  that  "certain 
proportion  "  never  then  to  make  the  theological  acts  of  faitli, 
hope,  and  charity?  Never  to  prepare  for  Confession — that 
searching  of  reins  and  heart,  face  to  face  witli  God  alone  ? 
Never  to  receive  Holy  Connrmnion,  and  pour  out  in  thanks- 
giving such  feelings  of  exuberant  exaltation  as  can  accompany 
no  prayer  to  the  Blessed  Mother  ?  Does  this  "  certain  propor- 
tion "  carefully  avoid  all  visits  to  the  Blessed  Sacrament,  to  the 
Forty  Hours'  Exposition,  to  the  solemnity  of  Benediction? 
"It  has  been  ascertained,"  forsooth!  by  whom,  when,  where, 
hoio  f  I  apologize  heartily  to  the  humblest  intelligence  among 
my  fellow-Catholics  for  thus  noticing  this  revolting  ignorance. 
Even  Pusey's  learning  does  not  save  him  from  frequent  mani- 
festations of  that  idiocy,  with  which  the  Vicar  has  made  us  so 
familiar. 

17.  I  now  come  to  the  Vicar's  complaint,  copied  verbatim 
from  Pusey,  against  Father  Faber,  for  saying  that  "  an  im- 
mense increase  of  devotion  to  Mary,"  "  nothing  less  than  an 
i?nmense  one"  is  among  the  most  desirable  of  eventualities. 


A  Rejoinder.  321 

Before  comiiienting  on  this,  let  ine  put  before  your  readers 
the  sentiments  of  the  Anglo-ritualist  periodical,  the  Union 
lieview.  This  was  the  organ  of  the  Unionist  Party  in  the 
Anglican  church  in  1866,  led  by  Pusey  and  others,  of  which  I 
have  already  spoken.     The  lieview  says : 

' '  Jesus  chose  Mary.  What  more  can  be  said  ?  When  it  is  said,  n  ot 
concealed  iu  learned  language,  but  conveyed  in  warm  and  loving 
words  thi'oughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  England,  we  shall  be 
satisfied.  The  people  are  being  taught  to  believe  in  Jesus:  they 
must  learn  to  link  her  name  with  His  in  their  memories,  as  it  is  in 
the  Sacred  Scriptures  and  as  it  is  in  the  Divine  Decrees.  In  every 
heart  in  which  the  Cross  is  set  up  She,  the  Mother  of  the  Cruci- 
fied, must  find  a  place,  and  her  own  place.  Then,  and  not  till  then 
will  a  reproach  be  rolled  away  from  England,  then  and  not  till 
then  may  we  hope  for  reunion  with  the  rest  of  Christendom." 

O  what  a  rapture !  Is  it  not  simply  transpoi'tiiig  to  liear  your 
opponent  talk  in  such  strains,  though  in  the  next  breath  he 
vilifies  the  saintly  Faber,  for  expressing  similar  thoughts, 
though  happily  in  a  very  different  spirit — "Faber,  whose 
memory  I  cherish,"  says  Pusey,  "  and  from  whom  I  thankfully 
own  that  I  have  learned  much." 

But  to  return  to  my  text — Faber's  desire  for  "  an  immense 
increase  of  devotion  to  Mary."  These  words  occur  in  Father 
Faber's  preface  to  De  Montfort's  work,  already  referred  to ; 
and  they  do  but  say  what  that  profoundly  spiritual  writer 
earnestly  inculcates.  Now,  to  a  Catholic  nothing  can  be  more 
intelligible  and  acceptable  than  Montfort's  and  Faber's  view. 
"Would  to  God  that  Protestants  would  take  it  to  heart  in  these 
days  when  the  world,  outside  the  Catholic  Church,  has  ceased 
to  believe  in  the  Incarnation,  and  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism 
flaunt  their  baimers  to  every  breeze !  The  Incarnation  casts 
off  two  rays  of  light :  on  the  one  side,  the  mystery  of  the  Holy 
Sacrifice  of  the  Altar ;  on  the  other,  the  devotion  due  to  the 
blessed  mother  of  Jesus.  The  shepherds  of  Bethlehem  from 
the  hill-sides,  the  Magi  from  the  East,  came  to  adore  the 
newly-born  God.  "They  found  the  Child  with  Mary  His 
mother";  they  found  Him  resting  in  His  mother's  ariris,  as  on 
His  appointed  throne.     They  anticipated  that  very  form  of 


322  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

worship  which  Catholics  have  retained  and  Protestants  re- 
jected. It  was,  indeed,  one  of  Mary's  greatnesses  and  bene- 
dictions, that  her  Divine  Son  thought  fit  to  manifest  Himself 
in  an  age  and  condition  which  obliged  Him  to  manifest  her 
with  Him.  Thus,  it  is  a  right  belief  about  the  Divine  Mater- 
nity of  Mary  which  is  the  most  perfect  safeguard  and  security 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation.  The  whole  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion  depends  upon  this  doctrine,  and  the  one  true  and 
only  sovereign  remedy  against  the  decomposition  of  tin?  fun- 
damental truth  is  to  be  found  in  the  dogma  of  the  Divine 
Maternity — "  Mary,  of  whom  was  born  Jesus."  Father  New- 
man says : 

"  If  we  look  through  Europe,  we  shaJl  find,  on  the  whole,  that  just 
those  nations  and  countries  have  lost  their  faith  in  the  Divinity  of 
Christ  who  have  given  up  devotion  to  His  Mother,  and  that  those 
on  the  other  hand,  who  had  been  foremost  in  her  honor,  have  re- 
tained their  orthodoxy.  Contrast,  for  instance,  the  Calvinists  with 
the  Greeks,  or  France  with  the  North  of  Germany,  or  the  Protestant 

and  Catholic  communions  in  Ireland In  the  Catholic  Chui-ch 

Mary  has  shown  herself,  not  the  rival,  but  the  minister,  of  her  Son ; 
she  has  protected  Him,  as  in  His  infancy,  so  m  the  whole  history  of 
the  Religion." 

The  Union  Review  concurs,  in  these  words : 

"It  is  also  true,  and  deserves  consideration,  that  there  has  been 
hitherto  no  marked  tendency  to  heresy  on  the  subject  of  the  Incar- 
nation among  Roman  Catholics,  while,  where  the  dignity  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  has  been  underrated  heresies  have  speedily  crept  in." 

The  reason  is  obvious.  The  Church  teaches  in  a  thousand 
ways  that  the  most  effective  and  acceptable  way  of  contem- 
plating Jesus,  is  the  uniting  with  His  mother  in  that  contem- 
plation ;  that  the  thoughts  of  Jesus  and  of  Mary  should  be 
indissolubly  united.  By  honoring  Mary  as  His  Mother  one 
can  never  forget  that  He  is  Man  ;  by  approaching  Him  through 
her  mediation  one  can  never  forget  that  He  is  God.  "  Mary 
is  the  marvellous  echo  of  God"  beautifully  writes  Montfort, 
"  wlio  answers  only  '  God  '  when  we  say  '  Mary ';  who  glorifies 
only  God,  when  with  St.  Elizabeth  we  call  her  Blessed."     So, 


A  Rejoinder.  323 

too,  devotion  to  her,  if  worthy  of  the  name,  will  assuredly 
issue  in  a  loving  contemplation  of  her  history — of  those  jnys- 
teries  (as  Cathohes  call  them),  Joyful,  Sorrowful,  Glorious, 
which  are  commemorated  in  the  Rosjiry.  Now,  there  is  no 
history  of  her  current  in  the  Church  except  in  closest  connec- 
tion with  her  Divine  Son.  On  the  details  of  her  life  during 
those  periods  when  her  life  was  led  apart  from  His — before 
the  Annunciation  and  after  the  Ascension — Scripture  preserves 
a  deep  silence  ;  nor  has  there  been  any  beyond  the  most 
f  paring  supplement  of  Scripture  from  the  stores  of  tradition. 
Her  joys,  as  contemplated  by  Catholics,  were  in  His  Presence; 
her  sorrows  in  His  Passion ;  her  exaltation  in  His  Resurrec- 
tion and  Ascension.  To  dwell  on  her  mysteries,  then,  is  to 
think  of  Him  in  the  most  affecting  and  impressive  way  in 
which  that  thought  can  possibly  be  presented. 

Thanks  be  to  God,  we  see  to-day  the  fulfilment  of  the 
aspirations  of  Faber  and  Montfort.  Most  remarkable  has  been 
the  increase  of  devotion  to  the  blessed  Mother  of  God  during 
the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  and  its  fruit  is  an  increase  of  the 
worship  of  her  Son.  But  it  is  in  the  wants  of  our  own  times 
that  we  find  the  special  reason  for  this  devotion.  During  the 
month  of  October,  our  illustrious  Pontiff,  Leo  XIII.,  has  di- 
rected the  recital  of  the  Rosary  in  every  church  throughout 
the  world,  and  in  his  Encyclical  Letters  urges  us  to  recite  the 
Rosary  without  ceasing  and  to  never  intermjpt  that  holy  cxer- 
eisc.  In  this  city,  too,  there  has  just  been  established  "  The 
Association  of  the  Perpetual  Rosary,"  in  which  it  is  recited 
day  and  night  umnterruptedly^  to  render  homage  to  our 
Blessed  Mother,  and  to  commemorate  the  Incarnatir ii,  Passion, 
Resurrection,  and  Ascension  of  Our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is  these  scenes  in  the  Divine  Drama  that  the 
Rosary  recalls  and  puts  before  us  each  time  we  repeat  it.  It 
is  simply  "  an  abridgment  or  compendium  of  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ."  It  compels  us,  so  to  speak,  to  fix  our  minds  on 
the  various  details  of  the  history  summed  up  in  the  words  of 
the  Evangelist :  '■'And  the  word  was  made  flesh ^  It  invites 
us  to  become  familiar  with  the  working  out  of  the  Divine 
plan  for  man's  salvation.     It  is  an  easy  and  approj)riate,  yet 


324:  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

the  sublimest,  series  of  Bible  lessons.  How  far  more  real  and 
vivid  the  impression  made  by  such  a  pious  exercise  as  this  than 
by  that  merely  verbal  study  of  the  New  Testament  which  pre- 
vails outside  the  Church  1  Contrast  the  intelligent  knowledge 
of  Our  Lord's  Life  and  Death  and  Resurrection  possessed  by 
a  Catholic  child  who  has  been  taught  the  Rosary,  with  that  of 
a  mere  Protestant  Bible  reader,  and  there  will  be  no  doubt 
which  of  the  two  best  appreciates  the  meaning  and  the  value 
of  the  Gospel  story.  And  so.  Bishops,  Cardinals,  and  Popes, 
rulers  of  men  and  leaders  of  thought,  statesmen,  politicians, 
generals,  and  kings  tell  their  beads,  and  find  in  the  Devotion 
of  the  Rosary  a  holy  and  wholesome  practice  of  prayer,  well 
•suited  to  raise  the  thoughts  to  God  and  do  honor  to  His 
Divine  Majesty.  The  predictions  of  Montfort  and  Faber  have 
been  justified.  "  Ignorance,"  says  Carlyle,  "  is  an  awkward, 
lumpish  wench,  not  yet  gone  into  vicious  courses,  nor  to  be 
harshly  used  ;  but  ignorance  and  insolence — these  are  for  cer- 
tain an  unlovely  mother  and  bastard."  That  the  "mother" 
and  the  "  bastard "  are  of  the  Vicar's  kith  and  kin  is  once 
more  apparent. 

I  have  now  met  unquaiHngly,  and  answered  fully  and  defi- 
antly, not  only  every  one  of  the  "scraps"  gathered  by  the 
Vicar  from  Pusey,  St.  Liguori,  and  the  HaccoUa,  but,  at  the 
cost  of  some  tediousness,  I  made  a  selection  from  Pusey  of 
others  which  I  conscientiously  believed  to  be  the  greatest 
stumbling-block  to  candid  Protestants,  in  the  apprehension  of 
our  doctrine  on  the  topic  in  dispute.  The  labor  lias  been  to 
me  one  of  love  and  simple  delight,  and  I  will  feel  amply  re- 
warded if  your  honest  Protestant  readers  will  have  learned, 
that  the  religion  which  most  of  their  teachers  and  writers  in- 
veigh against  under  the  name  of  the  Catholic  religion,  is  a  re- 
ligion which  Catholics  themselves  would  detest  most  cordially 
— if  such  a  religion  reaUy  existed  ! 

I  have  something  more  to  say  about  Pusey,  whose  testimony 
has  been  so  damning  to  the  Vicar.  Your  readers  are  aware  of 
the  difference  between  the  tone  of  \}i\Q  first  and  second  volumes 
of  the  Eirenicon.  But  I  am  able  to  offer  them  a  piece  of  inde- 
pendent evidence  from  Pusey,  which  will  serve,  for  all  time, 


A  Rejoindek.  825 

to  destroy  the  value  of  the  Jirst  volume  as  an  arsenal  for  ritual- 
istic Vicars  in  their  quixotic  attempts  to  hide  their  tlie^logical 
nakedness.  I  have  three  Letters  written  hy  Pusey  after  the 
appearance  of  the  Eirenicon.  Two  of  them  are  addressed  to 
the  editor  of  the  London  WeeJdy  Register^  a  Catholic  paper, 
and  the  third  to  Dr.  AYordsworth.  This  last  contains  an  ex- 
press avowal  of  that  lamentahle  ignorance  as  to  the  very  mean- 
ing of  the  Immaculate  Conception  with  which  Father  Newman 
had  charged  him.  But  I  am  not  concerned  with  this  now.  I 
refer  to  the  first,  that  of  Nov.  22,  1865,  in  which  he  expressly 
and  deliberately  retracts  the  violent  and  ignorant  criticisms  of 
his  first  volume,  which  the  Yicar  now  "  trots  out "  afresh — 
suppressing  all  notice  even  of  the  second  volume.  Your 
readers  will  remember  that  at  this  time  Pusey  with  the  Union- 
ist Party  was  seeking  admission  into  the  Catholic  Church — on 
terms  !    Here  are  his  words : 

' '  Let  me  say  that  I  did  not  write  as  a  reformer,  but  on  the  defen- 
sive. It  is  not  for  us  topr  srihe  to  Italians  or  Spaniards  what  they 
shall  hold,  or  how  they  shall  express  their  pious  opiniona.  All 
"which  we  wish  is  to  have  it  made  certain  by  authority  that  we  sliall 
not,  in  case  of  reunion,  be  obliged  to  hold  to  them  ourselves.  Least 
of  all  did  I  think  of  imputing  to  any  of  the  writers  ichom  I  quoted 
that  they  took  from  our  Lord  any  of  the  love  which  they  gave  to 

His  mother.    I  was  intent  only  on  describing  the  system / 

had  not  the  least  thought  of  criticising  holy  men  who  held  it.''^ 

These  are  certainly  extraordinary  words  from  the  author  of 
,  the  Eirenicon,  as  the  Vicar  has  introduced  it  to  your  readers ; 
out,  nevertheless,  they  are  the  sober,  second  thoughts  of  the 
Vicar's  witness  to  his  "  wider  view  of  the  cultus  of  Mary,"  on 
which  he  bases  his  loathsome  charges  of  "  Impiety,"  "  Infidel- 
ity," "  Apostasy,"  and  "  Idolatry  "  ! 

Now  mark.  The  very  devotions  which  Pusey  denounced  in 
the  Eirenicon  are  now  mildly  characterized  as  the  "expres- 
sion "  of  men's  "  pious  opinions."  Why,  then,  may  not  those 
who  use  the  English  tongue,  as  well  as  Italians  and  Spaniards, 
if  God  draws  them  to  it,  "express  their  pious  opinions"  in  a 
similar  shape  ?  Again.  In  St.  Liguori,  in  Montfort  (whom 
Pusey  constantly  quotes),  and  in  a  thousand  other  like-minded 


826  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsiim. 

men — next  to  their  personal  love  of  God  and  of  their  Saviour 
— there  was  no  more  conspicuous  characteristic  of  their  whole 
interior  life  than  their  enthusiastic  devotion  to  Mary.  Pusey, 
in  his  work,  describes  this  devotion  as  extravagant,  and  as  tend- 
ing to  obscure  the  thought  of  God  •  but  nov/  he  protests  in  his 
letter  that  he  had  "no  thought  of  criticising  these  holy  men." 
What  does  the  Vicar  say?  How  does  Pusey  support  his 
charges  ? 

Pusey  thinks,  moreover,  that  none  of  these  men  took  from 
our  Lord  any  of  that  love  which  they  gave  to  His  mother.   But 
if  so,  their  love  of  Mary  must  have  been  to  them  an  unspeak- 
able blessing.     Surely  to  love  tenderly,  and  contemplate  unre- 
mittingly, a  spotlessly  holy  creature,  will  be  admitted  by  every 
religious  man  to  be  in  itself  an  immense  blessing.     Ignorant 
Protestants,  however,  commonly  think  that  this  blessing  cannot 
be  obtained  without  paying  for  it  too  high  a  price ;  without 
taking  from  our  Lord  a  large  portion  of  that  love  which  they 
give  to  His  mother.     Why  is  it,  by  the  way,  that  Protestant 
preachers  and  "heated  pulpiteers"  generally,  so  persistently 
disparage  tenderness  to  the  highest  and  purest  creature  that 
ever  came  from  the  hands  of  God,  while  so  tolerant  of  creature- 
love  in  a  very  far  more  questionable  shape  ?     How  transcencl- 
ently  transcendental  becomes  the  spirituality  of  some  "uxorious 
men  of  God"  as  they  descant  on  the  "idolatrous  worship" 
paid  by  Catholics  to  the  lovely  Virgin  Mother !    Eeally,  to 
hear  tlieir  language  about  us,  one  would  suppose  that  they  ex- 
haust the  whole  tenderness  of  their  hearts  on  Objects  simply 
Divine ;  that  there  is  among  them  no  love  of  mother,  of  wife, 
of  children,  of  friends — that  their  hearts  beat  with  sensible 
love  for  God  and  for  God  alone.     Out  on  such  damning  hy- 
pocrisy !     Kow  Pusey,  at  all  events,  thinks  the  Protestant  ob- 
jection chimerical;  and  he  must  consider,  therefore,  that  the 
love  of  Mary  is  an  unmixed  blessing  to  "  these  holy  men."    In 
other  words,  Pusey  thinks  that  they  derive  an  inappreciable 
happiness  and  blessing  from  a  devotion  which  his  poor  parasite 
denounces  as  "  Infidelity,"  "  Apostasy,"  and  "  Idolatry  "  !     So 
much  for  Pusey  considered  as  a  witness  invoked  by  the  Vicar, 
and  for  his  evidence  against  us. 


A  Rejoin DKK.  327 

I  now  proceed  shortly  to  remark  on  Pusey's  competency  as  a 
witness  to  the  teaching  of  the  CathoHc  Church,  as  evidenced  by 
the  Eirenicon.  Tlie  Vicar  in  his  sixth  letter  thus  speaks  of  it : 
"  Dr.  Pusey's  Eirenicon,  3  vols.,  is  a  perfect  storehouse  of  ac- 
curate information  on  Roman  errors,  and  is  specially  full  on  the 
cultus  of  the  Virgin.  Every  lover  of  Christian  truth  should 
secure  a  copy."  With  the  third  volume  we  are  not  concerned  in 
this  discussion.  T\\Q  first  and  second  alone  engage  us.  The  Vicar, 
for  reasons  already  pointed  out  to  your  readers,  suppressed  all 
reference  to  Pusey's  sentiments  expressed  in  the  second,  and 
took  his  "  wider  view  "  from  the  first.  This  has  reached  the 
seventh  thousand  edition,  and  is  the  armory  from  which  such 
controversial  tricksters  as  the  Vicar  borrow  their  weapons. 
Bishop  Kingdon  got  his  little  story  from  tlie  same  source. 

Pusey  had  been  brought  into  active  and  successful  contro- 
versy with  the  school  of  rationalists  and  unbelievers  in  the 
Anglican  Church ;  he  had  attacked  "  Colenso's  heathenism,"  as 
he  calls  the  doctrine  of  a  bishop  of  his  own  church,  and  he  had 
grappled  ably  with  the  infamies  written  in  "  Essays  and  Re- 
views" by  beneficed  ministers  of  Anglicanism.  It  was  the 
nnhappiness  of  Pusey's  position,  however,  that  he  was  com- 
pelled to  join  issue  with  Rationalism  in  detail  rather  than  on 
vrinciple  /  that  he  was  precluded  from  assailing  it  at  its  start- 
ing point — that  he  could  not  impugn  its  first  principles  with- 
out condemning  the  whole  ecclesiastical  position  of  the  Anglican 
Church.  It  is  more  apparent  now  than  when  uttered  by 
Disraeli  forty  years  ago,  that  for  men  who  must  think  on  such 
matters,  the  issue  is  between  the  Catholic  Church  and  infidelity. 
Protestantism  in  all  its  protean  shapes,  as  an  intellectual  system 
of  Christianity,  is  "  played  out."  The  one  secret  of  intellectual 
strength  is  intellectual  consistency.  Catholics,  and  they  only, 
are  able  consistently  to  contend  against  the  foe,  because  they 
only  have  consistently  contended  against  the  foe's  fundamental 
maxims.  Pusey  had  a  measure  of  success  because  he  worked 
on  Catholic  lines  and  used  Catholic  principles.  For  his  noble 
services  to  that  portion  of  Catholic  truth,  which  he  held  in 
common  with  them.  Catholic  writers  have  expressed  the  warm- 
est gratitude. 


328  Ipse,  Ipsa,  1p8[jm. 

Now,  it  has  been  observed  by  the  learned  and  philosophic 
De  Maistre  as  noteworthy,  that  so  many  writers,  who  have 
warred  against  infidelity  with  signal  power  and  sncce&i,  when 
turning  their  weapons  against  Rome,  have  been  suddenly 
smitten  both  with  feebleness  of  arm  and  unskilfulness  of  aim. 
No  more  singular  instance  of  this  can  be  found  than  the  Jirst 
volume  of  the  Eirenicon.  Pusey  was  occupied  twelve  months 
on  its  composition,  and  it  is  a  mass  of  inaccuracies  and  gross 
mistakes.  Error  and  misquotation  is  the  rule,  accuracy  the 
rare  exception,  while  his  elaborate  notes  are  one  vast  congeries 
of  blunders.  He  has  heaped  together  from  Protestant  sources 
long-ex])loded  accusations  against  the  Catholic  Church,  and 
objections,  refuted  long  ago,  against  her  teaching ;  and  he  has 
filled  more  than  half  his  volume  with  the  effete  sophisms  of 
the  Protestant  controversialists  of  the  last  three  centuries,  of 
which  modern  criticism  has  learned  to  be  ashamed.  But  he 
has  not  been  content  with  this.  He  has  filled  up  the  nooks 
and  corners  with  gossip  and  hearsay,  and  the  interesting  com- 
munications of  his  private  correspondents ;  or,  with  calumnies, 
which  are  only  at  large  because  they  preserve  their  incognito. 
1  have  counted  and  marked  twelve  such  argumentative  inde- 
cencies. He  has  undertaken  to  explain  our  Councils  and 
Papal  Bulls  for  us,  according  to  principles  of  interpretation 
which  we  can  neither  accept  nor  admit ;  and  in  the  course  of 
his  disquisitions  has  displayed  so  complete  an  unacquaintance 
with  the  scholastic  Theology  from  which  he  professes  to  quote 
as  to  elicit  feelings  of  simple  pity.  He  has  in  fact  confounded 
articles  of  faith  with  questions  still  open  to  discussion  ;  has  mis- 
understood the  authors  whom  he  quotes,  and  made  them  de- 
fend as  opinions  of  their  own,  what  they,  in  common  with  the 
whole  churcii,  have  condemned  as  heresy.  So  far  does  this 
ignorance  go,  that  he  has  actually  quoted,  in  the  instance  of 
three  distinct  Doctors,  arguments  which,  according  to  the 
known  practice  of  the  great  scholastic  Theologians,  are  placed 
at  the  commencement  of  the  articles  or  chapters  for  the  express 
purpose  of  refutation,  as  though  they  were  the  genuine  opin- 
ions of  the  authors  themselves.  Your  readers  have  already  as 
much  proof  of  tiiese  statements  as  they,  at  present,  can  require. 


A  Rejoinder.  829 

And  this  is  the  book  that "  educated  Engh'sh  gentlemen  "  quote 
against  the  benighted  " Romanists  of  these  parts"!  "Were  I 
an  Anghcan,  my  daily  prayer  would  be  that  God  might  frus- 
trate the  consummation  of  Imperial  Federation,  lest  more  of 
such  ^'■gentlemen''''  might  be  inflicted  on  the  church  in  this 
Province. 

Let  us  see  now,  if  a  new  witness  will  contribute  something 
to  comfort  the  Vicar.  Ah !  there  is  Saint  Littledale !  and  his 
"  admirable  and  honest  Plain  Reasons,  30th  Thousand  ! "  Now, 
I  intended  to  devote  a  Letter  to  this  ritualistic  "  Pope,"  and  the 
"Plain  Reasons,  «&;c.,"  but  time  does  not  permit;  nor  is  it 
necessary,  since  I  can  refer  your  interested  readers  to  Father 
Ryder's  "Catholic  Controversy,"  a  reply  in  detail  to  the 
"  Pope's "  book.  As  a  good  Catholic,  however,  always  re- 
spects a  Pope,  I  cannot  entirely  ignore  him,  though  my 
remarks  will  be  only  supplementary  to  Father  Ryder's  book. 

I  begin,  then,  by  asserting  that  "Richard  Frederick  Little- 
dale,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.."  is  an  infamous  liar  and  unmitigated  hypo- 
crite, for  eve^^  hypocrite  is  a  liar.    Now  I  will  prove  it. 

In  his  "  Plain  Reasons "  Littledale  denounces  the  doctrine 
and  practice  of  the  Invocation  of  Saints  and  Angels,  and  de- 
votes pages  to  prove  the  Catholic  Church  "  idolatrous  "  on  this 
account.  Now  he  is  either  a  hypocrite  or  an  idolater  with  her. 
For,  I  have  before  me  a  ritualistic  book  entitled  :  "  Devotions 
for  the  Comminiion  of  Saints,"  which  not  only  advocates 
veneration  and  invocation — direct  invocation— of  the  Blessed 
Virgin,  and  of  the  Saints  and  Angels,  but  which  contains 
prayers  and  exercises  for  putting  this  doctrine  into  practice. 
Littledale  has  written  u  preface  to  this  work.  In  it  he  replies 
to  objections  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Invocation  of  Saints,  and, 
while  advocating  the,  practice,  declares  that  although  it  is  not 
abaoUitely  binding,  yet  if  a  person  choose  to  neglect  it  he 
thereby  "fails  to  avail  himself  of  a  privilege"  (i)age  xii). 
Here  is  a  short  list  of  the  contents  of  his  new  book. 

First  there  are  "  Vigils  or  wakes  of  the  departed,"  taken,  we 
are  told, "  from  the  old  service  books  of  English  use,"  a  "  use  " 
existing,  by  the  way,  when  the  "  Romish  doctrine  of  Purga- 
tory "  (39  articles)  was  in  full  sway.     Besides  several  prayers 


330  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipslm. 

and  litanies  for  the  "  faithful  departed  "  we  also  have — what 
do  you  think  ?  "  The  Rosary  for  the  faithful  departed ! " 
(page  104).  Thei'e  are  also  exercises  for  the  2l8t  of  Novem- 
ber, which  day  we  are  told  is  observed  "  in  honor  of  our  Lady's 
being  presented  in  the  Temple,"  (page  167),  and  the  recitation 
of  the  Five  Joyful  Mysteries  of  the  liosary  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin  Mary  is  recommended  as  a  pious  method  of  ohserv- 
ijuj  the  feast.  One  of  the  "  Plain  Reasons  against  joining  the 
Church  of  Rome"  is  the  use  of  the  Rosary — an  idolatrous 
custom  to  be  repudiated  by  all  "  true  Catholics."  It  appears, 
then,  that  the  Rosary  is  "  idolatrous"  only  when  it  is  necessary 
to  concoct  "  Reasons  "  against  persons  becoming  Catholics,  but 
for  Ritualists,  who  desire  to  go  in  for  ''  all  Roman  doctrine  " 
without  submitting  to  the  Church  which  alone  teaches  it,  it  is  a 
"  pious  and  edifying  devotion."  Besides  the  Rosary  there  are 
litanies  and  prayers  addressed  directly  to  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
with  the  "  pray  for  us,"  as  in  the  Catholic  Church.  Then  fol- 
low other  litanies  and  prayers  addressed  to  different  saints  and 
angels,  invoking  their  aid  and  intercession,  in  language  similar 
to  that  of  our  books  of  devotion. 

Then  again,  compare  the  following  language  used  with  re- 
spect to  the  Blessed  Virgin  in  ''Devotions  for  the  Comnmnion 
of  Saints  "  with  the  charges  brought  against  us  by  the  Vicar, 
and  by  Littledale  in  "  Plain  Reasons,"  of  "  idolatry,"  "  ex- 
travagant expressions,"  "  impious  utterances,"  etc.,  etc . 

"Hail  and  rejoice,  0  most  Blessed,  most  pure,  and  most  hon- 
orable Virgin  Mary!  O  most  illustrious  Star  of  the  Sea!  Who 
shinest  more  brightly  than  all  others  over  the  darkness  of  tliis  world. 
....  Behold  I  praise  and  salute  Thee,  O  most  Holy  Virgin,  mother 
of  my  Lord  "  (page  195). 

According  to  Littledale's  "Devotions,  etc.,"  the  Blessed 
Virgin  is  a  dispenser  of  grace — hardly  in  accord  with  "  Plain 
Reasons."    Read : 

"Hail  full  of  Grace!  Let  thy  charity  overflow,  then,  upon  us, 
for  wherefore  art  thou  full,  if  not  to  dispense  of  thy  fullness ! 
Let  thy  fountains  be  dispersed  abroad;  even  thy  prayers  for  us 
exiles  in  this  vale  of  tears  "  (page  197). 


A  Rejoindeu.  881 


Again : 


"O  most  holy  Virgin,  who  is  able  to  measure  the  fullness  of 
grace  whicli  thou  hast  above  all  the  saints  ?  They  were  little  rivers; 
but  thou,  according  to  thy  name,  art  full  like  the  sea"  (page  205). 

Once  more,  the  following  prayer  to  our  Lady  scarcely  bar- 
monizes  with  the  views  ex])re88ed  in  "  Plain  Ileasons  ": 

"And  I  also,  O  Lady,  praise,  bless,  and  glorify  thee,  and  rejoice  ' 
that  thou  art  praised,  blessed,  and  glorified  by  all  genemtions  of 
faithful   Christians!     And  I  beseech  thee   remember  me   in  thy 
prayers,  that  I  may  obtain  all  the  blessings  which  thy  Son's  Incar- 
nation purchased  for  me"  (page  207). 

Or  again  the  following : 

V 

"Holy  and  Immaculate  Virginity !  with  what  praises  to  address 
thee  1  know  not "  (page  247). 

But  I  must  stop.  There  is  Littledale — the  ritualistic  Dr. 
Jekyll  and  the  anti-Catholic  Mr.  Hyde,  the  liar  and  the  hypo- 
crite. The  picture  is  perfect.  I  wish  I  had  time  to  expand 
it,  but  have  I  not  proved  my  case  ?  And  this  is  the  man  who 
is  permitted  to  speak,  even  in  the  pages  of  the  EncyclopoRdia 
Britannico,  against  the  Catholic  Church  and  her  religious 
Orders.  This  is  the  hmiest  man  wlio  charges  the  Catholic 
Church  with  "idolatry"  and  "  corrxiption "  because  lier  chil- 
dren practice  the  very  doctrine  which  he,  as  an  Anglican 
Minister,  does  liis  best  to  promote  among  the  members  of  his 
own  church.  This  is  the  Littledalean  morality  —  and  not 
"  adapted  "  from  St.  Liguori  either,  the  very  spawn  of  whicli 
has  rei  ched  even  to  this  city.  It  comes  simply  to  this :  An- 
glicans can  go  to  any  extremes  in  Catholic  practices,  but  if 
they  seem  disposed  to  waver  in  their  allegiance  to  Anglican- 
ism and  its  teachings,  they  must  be  taught  that  these  same 
doctrines,  however  good  when  held  by  Anglo-Ritualists,  are  to 
be  regarded  in  the  Catholic  Church,  their  true  liome,  as  "  Im- 
pious," "Infidel,"  "Idolatrous."  This  is  the  plan  which 
Littledale  and  his  satellites  adopt  the  world  over,  to  prevent,  if 
possible,  Ritualists  from  becoming  Catholics. 


832  Ii'rtE,  Ipsa,  Ii'sim. 

Now,  there  are,  perhaps,  few  spectacles  more  calculated  to 
draw  tears  from  augels  and  mockery  from  devils,  than  that  of 
good  men  led  astray  in  pursuit  of  a  shadow,  whilst  the  living 
reality  is  there  present  before  them,  if  they  would  but  open 
their  eyes  to  see  it.  To  distract  virtuous  souls  from  a  real 
good  by  its  false  semblance,  is  no  new  artifice  of  man's  great 
enemy ;  but  it  would  be  difficult  to  lind  a  more  lamentable  in- 
stance of  it,  than  Ritualism  affords.  Having  catalogued  to  his 
own  satisfaction,  in  his  Jlrst  Letter,  the  "enormities"  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  the  Vicar  appeals  to  me  and  to  my  fellow- 
Catholics  in  these  words : 

"Surely  it  is  the  duty  of  all  lovers  of  "the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus," 
i.e.,  all  true  Catholic  Christians,  to  come  out  of  a  Church  which 
puts  its  imprimatur  upon  such  idolatrous  worship  as  this,  and  it  ill 
becomes  one  who  accepts  such  exli-avagauces  to  chide  those  who, 
for  fear  of  them,  fall  short  of  their  duty." 

Thus  far  had  he  got,  when  a  loud  burst  of  laughter  of  his 
own  conscience  at  itself  rang  out  through  his  soul.  This  con- 
vulsion of  irony  sent  cold  shivers  through  all  his  nerves,  and 
reduced  him  to  such  a  state  of  syncojje,  that  his  words  of  invi- 
tation to  join  the  "  Mission  Church,"  if  uttered,  were  drowned 
in  the  din  and  have  not  reached  us.  Let  the  will  stand  for  the 
deed.  I  will  take  up  the  broken  chord.  Ours,  in  addressing 
the  Yicar  and  his  friends,  shall  be  those  words  of  St.  Cyprian, 
and  I  honestly  and  fearlessly  utter  them : 

"Think  not  that  you  must  maintain  the  Gospel  of  Christ  while 
you  separate  youi-selves  from  the  liock  of  Christ,  and  from  its 

peace  and  concord And  since  our  unity  of  soul  and  heart 

may  in  no  wise  be  broken ;  and  because  we  cannot  leave  the  Church 
and  come  over  to  you,  we  invite  and  beseech  you  with  all  possible 
entreaty,  to  return  to  Mother  Church  and  to  a  brotherhood  of  com- 
munion with  us." 

It  is  one  of  the  last  efforts  of  the  enemy  of  souls,  when  lie 
sees  devout  and  earnest  persons  casting  a  wistful  look  Home- 
wards, to  distract  them  and  turn  aside  their  half-formed  re- 
solves, by  unpractical  schemes,  delusions,  and  snares.  Human 
responsibihty  is  always  independent  of  circumstances — at  least 


A    RE.JOINDEK.  888 

before  God.  Rev.  Mark  Pattison  missed  the  stage-coach  on 
the  morning  when  he  was  to  be  received  into  tlie  Catholic 
Churcli  with  Newman,  and  he  swung  oflE  into —  ?  The  stream 
of  time  flows  quickly,  though  insensibly.  The  morning  grows 
into  mid-day ;  and  lo !  it  is  evening  and  the  shadows  of  nigiit 
gather  round.  If  you  have  doubts  about  your  present  position 
— doubts  unsatisfied  ;  doubts  smothered  or  laid  aside ;  and  you 
do  nothing — and  the  end  comes ;  how  will  you  stand  "  at  the 
great  assize  "  ?  Meanwhile,  by  God's  mercy,  you  are  still  alive. 
You  may  still  have  real  peace  through  the  one  Ti-uth,  for — 

The  Spirit  of  the  Truth,  and  the  Catliolic  Roman  church,  tlie 
Bride  of  Christ,  say  to  you,  Come.    And  he  who  Ustens  to  the  call 
and  is   converted,  let  him  cany  on  the  invitation,    and  say  to 
others,  Come.    And  let  him  that  thirsteth  after  truth  and  peace 
and  grace.  Come.     And  whoever  has  but  the  honest  will,  let  him 
receive  the  celestial  stream,  which  flows  ever  from  the  Seven  Sacra- 
ments of  Life.    It  shall  cost  him  nothing ;  for  Christ  Jesus  has  pur- 
chased these  mercies  for  all  by  His  Pi*ecious  Blood. 
"  Et  Spiritus,  et  Sponsa,  dicunt, 
Veni: 
Et  qui  accedit,  dicat 
Veni: 
Et  qui  sitiat. 
Veniat  : 
Et  qui  vult,  accipiat  aquam  vitse  gratis." 

Apoc.  xxii.  17. 

I  will  conclude  in  my  next  with  some  critico-biblical  remarks 
on  Ijpm^  "  for  the  benefit  of  Biblical  students." 


LETTER  XXVIII. 

IPSE,   IPSA,    IPBUM — A  EEJOINDEB. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — When  discussing  the  academic  aspect  of  our  question, 
I  disclaimed  any  intention  of  investigating  and  weighing  the 
critical  value  of  the  reading  Ipsa.    My  object  then  was  to 


334  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

prove  that  in  Latin  (of  which  Bisliop  Kingdon  spoke),  the 
reading  of  Genesis  iii.  15  was  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum,  and  not 
Ipse,  Ipsa,  simply.  Again,  I  was  intent  on  making  very  clear 
to  your  readers  that  neither  what  the  Yicar  calls  the  "  cultus 
of  the  Virgin,''  nor  the  doctrine  of  the  Innnaculate  Concej> 
tion  owes  anything  whatever  to  the  last  clause  of  the  Prot- 
evangel ;  and  much  less  did  they  owe  anything  to  the  present 
reading  of  the  Yulgate.  On  these  points  I  have  left  not  a 
shadow  of  reason  for  the  assertions  made  hy  my  opponents, 
and  I  commend  what  I  have  written  to  the  attention  of  the 
next  Lambeth  Conference. 

I  will  now  address  myself  to  a  brief  exposition  of  the  critical 
argument  in  favor  of  Ipsa,  based  upon  data  supplied  by 
Hebrew,  Arabic,  Chaldaie,  Greek,  and  Latin  authority. 

To  refresh  the  memory  of  your  readers,  and  to  enable  them 
to  fully  estimate  the  grossness  of  Bishop  Kingdon's  blunder, 
I  will  here  give  the  Globe's  report  of  his  words  as  follows : 
"  Sometimes  the  substitution  of  one  letter  for  another  made  a 
vast  difference,  and  as  an  illustration  of  this  (the  Bishop)  re- 
ferred to  the  words  Ipse  and  Ipsa,  the  latter  word  in  an  im- 
portant passage  in  the  Douay  Bible  being  the  foundation  of 
the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception."  The  ^^  Douay 
Bible,"  remember !  But  let  us  charitably  suppose  that  this 
was  a  lapsus  linguae,  and  that  the  Bishop  meant  the  Yulgate. 
Even  then,  however,  the  statement  displays  disgraceful  igno- 
rance or  a  reckless  disregard  of  truth  ;  because  he  would  lead 
his  hearers  to  imagine  that  the  reading  fysa  was  only  to  be 
found  in  the  Latin  Version  or  Versions,  and  it  was  only  in  this 
way  that  he  could  work  up  his  "anecdote"  about  a ''mis- 
print."    Let  us,  therefore,  examine  the  fountain-heads. 

And  first  as  to  the  Hebrew,  the  original  par  excellence. 
Now  there  are  eight  Hebrew  MSS.  in  favor  of  Ipsa,  three  of 
which  are  absolutely  certain,  and  five  doubtful — "  Tria  hebra- 
ica  certo,  (luinqiie  dubie,"  says  Patrizi.  In  this  connection  I 
would  draw  attention  to  the  great  critical  principle,  first  laid 
down  by  Bengel,  but  not  fully  established  and  acted  upon  till 
the  publication  of  Griesbach's  Recensions,  that  the  testimonies 
in  favor  of  a  various  reading  have  not  an  individual  force 


A  Rejoinder.  335 

independent  of  the  recension  or  family  to  which  they  belong ; 
and  that  a  reading  must  be  decided,  not  by  the  number  of  dis- 
tinct authorities,  but  by  the  weujht  of  the  recension  which  con- 
tains it. 

My  next  Hebrew  authority  is  the  famous  Hebrew  inter- 
lineary  edition  of  the  Bible,  pubHshed  in  1572  by  the  learned 
Plantiu,  under  the  inspection  of  Boderianus.  This  has  Ipsa, 
or  rather  the  Hebrew  equivalent — IH.  Plantin  also  published 
the  great  Polyglot  Bible  of  Aleala,  containing  the  Hebrew, 
t'haldaic,  Greek,  and  Latin  texts.  This  work  was  done  under 
the  direction  of  Arias  Montanus,  whose  own  edition  of  the 
Royal  Bible,  in  Latin,  has  fysmn,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out.  Again,  besides  this  interlineary  edition,  there  are  tivo 
other  editions  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  published  at  Venice  in 
1776,  both  of  which  have  Ipsa. 

I  now  ask  your  readers'  attention  to  the  testimony  of  the 
illustrious  Jewish  scholar,  Maimonides,  A.D.  1135-1*204.  The 
Encyc.  Britannica  says  of  him  :  "He  was  the  greatci^t  theolo- 
gian and  philosopher  the  Jews  ever  produced,  and  one  of  the 
greatest  the  world  has  seen  to  this  day."  His  greatest  and 
most  learned  work  is  entitled  the  Guide  of  the  Perplexed,  in 
Hebrew  Moreh  Nelmkhim.  This  was  written  in  Arabic  and 
translated  into  Hebrew  by  himself.  In  this  work  Maimonides 
reads  the  Hebrew,  Ili — Ipsa,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing.  Ilia. 
The  book  is  translated  into  Latin  by  Buxtorf,  the  great  German 
Hebraist,  and  the  most  enunent  Oriental  scholar  of  his  day.  I 
give  the  words  from  Buxtorf  (P.  IL,  Cap.  XXX.)  as  follows: 
"  Sed  mirandum  magis  est  quod  serpens  cum  Eva  conjungatur, 
lioc  est,  semen  illius  cum  hujus  senn"ne,  ca])ut  et  calcaneus 
qnod  ILLA  (Eva)  vincat  ipsum  (serpentem)  in  capite,  et  ille 
(serpens)  vincat  ipsam  in  calcaneo."  To  this  the  "Editio  Jus- 
tinianaeo"  adds  these  words:  "  Hoc  est  quod  dictum  est.  Ipsa 
conteret  caput  tuum — This  is  what  is  said — She  shall  crush 
thy  headP  Your  readers  will  notice  that  Maimonides,  being 
a  Jew,  does  not  refer  the  Woman's  seed  to  Christ,  but  to  Eve. 
Christians,  however,  who  by  reason  of  the  fulfilment  of  tho 
prophecy  in  Christ,  now  know  that  He  is  the  seed  of  tho 
"Woman  who  is  to  crush  the  serpent's  head,  refer  it  to  Him. 


336  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

But  this  does  not  affect  the  testimony  of  Maimonides  to  the 
feminine  reading  iu  this  place,  and  I  do  not  know  where  to 
look  for  higher  authority  on  the  Hebrew  text.  I  must  not 
argue  the  matter,  however,  since  my  present  purpose  is  only  to 
give  your  readers  a  strictly  impartial  account  of  facts  in  this 
matter  just  as  I  find  them.  The  Vicar,  however,  makes  uu 
admission,  based  on  Ajrpleton's  Cyclopedia,  Vol.  II.,  610, 
which  supports  my  opinion  on  the  authority  of  Maimonides. 
He  says :  "  A  most  careful  recension  of  the  Hebrew  text  was 
made  in  the  Middle  Ages  by  eminent  Jewish  scholars,  v/ith  the 
aid  of  the  largest  possible  collection  of  MSS.,  who  in  their 
writings  speak  of  famous  copies  now  lost  whose  use  they  en- 
joyed." Now  Maimonides  was  living  in  the  midst  of  these 
Jewish  scholars,  he  was  the  most  eminent  among  them,  and  he 
adopts  Ipsa  as  the  true  Hebrew  reading.  Surely  the  inference 
to  be  drawn  is  strongly  in  its  favor. 

Before  passing  to  the  Arabic  authorities,  I  submit  a  few 
other  considerations  on  the  Hebrew  text.  We  have  very  little 
knowledge  of  the  primitive  text,  and  no  MSS.  older  than  the 
ninth  century ;  while  of  those  we  have  very  few  can  be  deemed 
older  than  the  twelfth  century.  Since  the  days  of  Kennicott 
and  De  Rossi,  modern  research  has  discovered  various  MSS. 
beyond  the  limits  of  Europe,  and  Patrizi's  statement,  already 
quoted,  proves  this.  Now,  we  know  that  in  the  Hebrew  as 
primitively  written,  the  masculine  form  of  the  pronoun  was 
used  of  the  feminine  also,  and  that  it  would  represent  alike 
Ipse  or  Ipsa;  so  that  from  the  simple  form  no  argument 
could  be  drawn  as  to  its  gender.  This,  Pusey  himself  con- 
fesses, is  "  one  of  the  observed  archaisms  of  the  Pentateuch  "; 
and  indeed  it  is  a  favorite  argument  among  scholars  for  the 
superior  antiquity  of  this  part  of  the  Old  Testament.  Fortu- 
nately, I  am  able  here  to  refer  your  readers  to  a  work,  easily 
accessible,  in  absolute  proof  of  this  proposition.  In  the  En- 
eye.  Britannica,  Vol.  XL,  p.  597,  Prof.  Robertson  Smith, 
now  of  Oxford,  shows  that  the  old  Hebrew  orthography  was 
TIu  and  Hi,  Ipse  and  Ipsa,  indifferently.  He  gives  the 
Hebrew  characters  with  and  without  the  modern  vowel-points. 
Not  until  about  the  sixth  century  was  this  changed.    Then  the 


A  Rejoinder.  337 

Masorete  doctors  (from  Masora^  tradition),  Jewish  grammari- 
ans, introduced  their  famous  thirteen  vowel-points  so-called, 
to  mark  the  pronunciation  only  for  the  puhlic  readers  of  the 
sacred  volume,  Hebrew  having  become  a  dead  language.  But 
to-day  the  Jews  in  their  synagogues  use  Bibles  without  points 
(though  I  have  not  been  able  to  verify  by  personal  inspection 
this  statement  of  a  learned  writer),  and  from  these,  therefore, 
the  gender  of  the  pronoun  camiot  be  determined.  ()p])()nents 
of  this  view  would  point  out  that  since  the  verb  contcret  is 
masculine  in  Hebrew,  the  pronoun  must  bo  masculine.  To 
this  I  have  replied  in  my  liesuine  by  showing  that  it  is  a  com- 
mon thing  in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  to  join  ]>ronouns  and 
verbs  of  the  masculine  gender  with  nouns  of  the  feminine,  and 
I  need  not  repeat  the  references  in  proof.  On  this  very  inter- 
esting and  important  point  in  the  critical  argument,  I  beg  to 
refer  yoiir  curious  readers  to  Ewald's  Hebrew  grammar,  J>ook 
II.,  §  184;  Gesenius'  Heb.  Gram.,  Cap.  I.,  §  33;  but  especially 
to  Eoorda's  Heb.  Gram.,  Book  III.,  §  88,  where  the  Hebrew 
characters  are  given,  with  and  without  vowel-points,  and  the 
matter  fully  discussed.  I  also  refer  them  to  Cardinal  Patrizi's 
work,  entitled,  "De  Feminini  Generis  Enallage  in  Linguis 
Seiniticis  Usitata  " — "  The  Enallage  of  the  Feminine  Gender 
occurring  in  the  Semitic  Languages,"  with  his  thirty-five 
canons  on  the  same. 

There  are  tico  Arabic  editions  of  the  Bible  having  Ipsa,  one 
published  in  1671,  the  other  in  1752. 

There  is  one  MSS.  copy  of  the  Chaldaic  version  that  has 
Ipsa. 

So  much  for  Semitic  authority  in  support  of  the  unfor- 
tunate "  misprint,''  and  I  will  now  examine  Greek  sources. 

I  liave  already  spoken  of  the  splendid  Hexapla  (six-fold) 
Bible  of  the  great  Origen.  It  was  six-columned,  and  con- 
tained the  Hebrew  text  in  Hebrew  characters,  and  the  same 
text  in  Greek  letters,  with  the  versions  of  Aquila,  Theodotion, 
Symmachus,  and  the  Church  version  of  the  Scptuagint.  Its 
object  was  to  exhibit  the  discrepancies  between  them,  and  to 
correct  the  last  when  necessary.  Nothing  now  remains  of  this 
monumental  work  but  fragments.     Fortunately,  lilontfaucon 


338  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

has  gathered  these  into  two  volumes.  In  Voh  I.,  p.  18,  I  find 
the  Greek  auie  sou  teiresei  Kephalen^  that  is  Ipsa  conteret 
caput  tuum.  He  gives  the  niascuhne  '"'■  Autos- Ipse''''  as  well ; 
but  of  '''' Ante- Ipsa''''  he  sajs :  "  Ita  MSS.  quidani,  ethaec  vide- 
tur  f uisse,  lectio  veteris  eujusdam  interpretis,  eu jus  nomen  tace- 
tur,  et  quern  sequitur  Vulgatus  interpres, — so  some  MSS.  and 
this  appears  to  have  been  the  reading  of  some  old  translator, 
whose  name  we  know  not,  and  whom  the  translator  ot  the 
Vulgate  follows."  And  so  we  have  the  authority  of  Origen 
(A.D.  186)  for  Ipsa^  supported  by  Montfaucon  from  Greek 
MSS. 

To  those  let  me  add  the  Latin  translator  of  St.  John  Chrys- 
ostom,  and  the  Latin  translator  of  Josephus,  who  was  Epipha- 
nius  the  Scholastic,  A.D.  510.  I  have  before  me  the  Greek 
of  Josephus,  the  Latin  rendition,  with  the  Latin  comment 
thereon  of  Havercamp,  the  best  editor  of  Josephus.  But  my 
limits  permit  no  comment. 

I  now  pass  to  the  Latin  version.  The  existence  of  a  Latin 
version  which  was  made  at  latest  as  early  as  A.D.  150  is  cer- 
tain. It  is  considered  by  competent  critics  to  be  probable  that 
there  were  two  such  versions,  one  Italian,  called  the  Vetus 
Itala — the  old  Itala  ;  the  other  African.  Time  does  not  per- 
mit me  fully  to  discuss  the  vexed  question — which  of  these  has 
claims  to  the  greater  authority,  which  can  justly  be  considered 
the  true  representative  of  the  original  version  ?  My  present 
purpose  does  not  require  anything  so  elaborate.  Speaking  of 
the  Itala  St.  Augustine  says : 

"  But  among  the  translations  themselves  the  Itala  is  to  be 
preferred  to  all  others ;  for  it  is  more  rigorously  observant  of 
words  and  has  also  greater  perspicuity — in  ipsis  autem  inter- 
pretationibus  Itala  ceteris  proeferatur  ;  nam  est  verhorum  ien- 
acior,  cum  perspicuitate  sentential." 

On  this  passage  great  Biblical  and  theological  writers  have 
based  an  almost  universally  received  hypothesis  that  there  ex- 
isted in  the  early  Western  Church  one  authentic  version  called 
the  Vetus  Itala — the  Old  Itala,  the  first  Latin  translation  of 
the  Scrijitures,  and  that  it  was  used  by  the  early  African 
Church,  which  thus  received  its  Bible  as  it  did  its  faith,  from 


A  Rejoindek.  339 

Rome,  the  fountain  of  Christianity.  Acting  \;pon  tliis  sup- 
jiosed  certainty  three  erudite  writers — Nobilius,  Bianchini,  and 
Sabbatier — have  labored  to  reconstruct  this  version  indiffer- 
ently from  the  quotations  of  all  the  Fathers,  without  regard  to 
country.  Now  what  do  these  great  writers  say  about  l2)sa  f 
I  have  delayed  this  Letter  in  the  hope  to  receive  from  Europe 
■  verified  extracts  from  Nobilius  and  Bianchini,  but  they  have 
not  come  to  hand.  I  am  able,  however,  to  speak  of  Sabbatier, 
who  says  that  the  Old  Itala,  the  first  Latin  translation  has  Ipsa. 
May  we  not  surely  conclude,  that  Nobilius  and  Bianchini  say 
the  same  thing,  since  they  go  over  the  same  ground  ?  See 
Sabbatier,  Blh.  Sac.  Lat.  Vers.,  Ant.  ad  Gen.  iii.  15 ;  T.  1,  p. 
J  9.'  If  this  be  the  true  state  of  the  case.  Ipsa  is  the  oldest 
reading,  and  this  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  it  spread  with 
lightning  rapidity  all  over  Europe,  in  a  time  when  there  were 
no  railroads  or  steamboats  to  bridge  over  the  distance  between 
Avidely  separated  peoples.  Consider,  too,  the  authority  of  these 
two  gigantic  minds — St.  Ambrose  and  St.  Augustine.  The 
former  was  consecrated  Bishop  in  A.D.  374.  lie  always  uses 
l2)sa,  and  it  must  therefore  have  been  in  the  Codex  which  he 
used,  and  which  he  had  always  by  him.  How  did  the  reading 
get  there  ?     If  it  had  got  in  ever  so  surreptitiously,  would  it 

'  Since  writing  the  above  I  have  been  able  to  examine  the  works 
themselves  of  Bianchuii  and  Nobilius.  Bianchini's  book — Vindi- 
cice  Canonicariim  Scripturarwn — has  uotlung  on  our  text.  Fj-oiii 
this  as  from  his  later  work — Evangeliorum  quadruplex—he  ap- 
pears to  have  devoted  his  attention  more  especially  to  the  New  Tes- 
tament. The  first  attempt  to  reconstruct  the  Old  Italic  Vei-sion  was 
made  by  Flaminius  Nobilius.  He  gathered  up  all  the  quotaticms 
from  this  translation  wliich  he  could  find  in  the  writings  of  the 
Fathers.  The  missing  passages  he  supplied  by  a  translation  of  the 
Greek  after  the  Vatican  MSS.  Tliis  has  Autos-Ipse  in  oiu*  text, 
and  Nobilius  therefore  gives  Ipse.  His  work,  however,  is  necessa- 
rily incomplete.  It  was  printed  at  Rome  in  1588 — more  than  a  cen- 
tury before  the  period  when  the  discovery  of  MSS.  began  to  excite 
scholars.  Sabbatier,  a  Benedictine  monk  of  the  celebrated  Congre- 
gation of  St.  Maur,  published  his  magnificent  work  in  1743.  He 
collected  all  the  fragments  which  had  come  to  light  since  the  time 
of  Nobilius,  and  his  volumes  remain  to-day  the  basis  of  aU  the 
researches  since  made  upon  the  subject. 


840  IrsK,  Ipsa,  IrsuM. 

Lave  been  able  to  escape  tbe  careful  study  of  this  vigilant 
Bishop  ?  Could  lie  have  been  free  from  suspicion  about  its 
correctness?  Could  he  have  received  an  innovation  so  singu- 
lar, and  not  only  have  adopted  it  with  an  improbable  credulity, 
but  have  done  so  without  informing  his  theological  readers 
(who  would  naturally  be  surprised  at  this  innovation  on  the 
old  reading),  what  had  induced  him  to  admit  the  alteration  ? 
Or  are  we  to  suppose  that  he  never  had  the  smallest  suspicion 
of  any  other  reading?  This  supposes  that  he,  a  Bishop  and 
learned  Doctor  of  the  Church,  was  so  contented  with  his  one 
copy  of  the  sacred  text,  as  never  to  have  even  collated  it  with 
all  the  older  manuscripts,  Latin  and  Greek,  in  which  the  mas- 
culine pronoun  may  have  been  retained.  Yet  surely  this  is 
simply  incredible. 

Again,  how  docs  it  come  to  pass,  that  the  erudite  St.  Augus- 
tine always  uses  Ipsa,  without  dropping  a  hint  about  the  read- 
ing being  new  or  doubtful  I  When  at  Milan,  immediately 
after  his  conversion,  and  when  he  frequented  the  school  of 
Ambrose,  he  mnst  surely  have  consulted  the  Codices  there; 
and  also  afterwards  at  Rome  where  he  wrote  and  published  his 
Soliloquies  and  other  works.  On  his  return  to  Africa,  where 
he  became  Bishop,  he  still  adhered  to  the  Old  Itala.  And, 
moreover,  the  question  of  Latin  versions  generally  seems  to 
have  attracted  his  particular  attention,  for  he  says :  "  The  skill 
of  those  who  desire  to  know  the  divine  Scriptures  must  be  on 
the  watch,  that  MSS.  not  emended  may  give  place  to  such  as 
are  emended."  It  is  plain  from  his  writings  that  he  had  great 
love  for  the  works  of  St.  Cyprian,  an  African  Father  who,  with 
Tertullian,  also  an  African,  uses  Ipse.  Yet  notwithstanding 
all  this,  Augustine  never  makes  any  explanation,  any  apology, 
suggests  no  doubt,  but  uses  what  is  to-day  our  received  text. 
But  more.  Writing  in  Africa,  and  in  the  face  of  the  mascu- 
line reading  in  the  pages  of  St.  Cyprian  and  Tertullian  open 
before  him,  the  great  Bishop  expressly  and  emphatically  de- 
clares, in  words  already  quoted  :  "  Among  the  translations,  the 
Itala  is  to  be  preferred  to  all  others,  for  it  is  more  rigorously 
observant  of  words  {tenacio)'  ve?'honwi,  more  closely  accnrate), 
and  has  also  greater  perspicuity,"    To  break  the  weight  of  St. 


A  Rejoinder.  841 

Augustine's  autliority,  the  Vicar  quotes  from  Canon  Westcott 
tliese  words  :  "  He  (St.  Augustine)  was  not  endowed  with  crit- 
ical sagacity  or  historical  learning,  and  had  very  little  knowl- 
edge of  Greek."  This  is  characteristic  of  a  man  who  can  swal- 
low whole  the  calumnies  of  a  Littledale,  and  is  so  lost  to  all 
sense  of  self-respect  as  to  offer  to  your  intelligent  readers  the 
anonymous  scribbiings  of  "Janus"  and  "  Quirinus"  as  author- 
ities in  an  argument.  Westcott,  however,  only  rejjeats  the 
nonsense  of  the  elder  Rosenmuller,  whose  language  about  St. 
Augustine  is  worthy  of  a  writer  who  gives  the  iirst  rank, 
among  Christian  commentators,  to  the  infamous  Pelagius  and 
Julian ! 

But  a  vindicator  of  St.  Augustine,  in  this  particular,  against 
"Westcott  and  all  "  smaller  fiy,"  has  not  been  wanting.    A 
learned  Protestant  writer.  Dr.  Henry  Clausen,  in  a  work  en- 
titled "  Aurelius  Augustinus  Hipponensis  Sacrce  Scripturai  lu- 
terpres,"  published  at  Copenhagen,  has  placed  the  merits  of 
the  great  Bishop,  as  a  Biblical  scholar,  in  a  very  dilfcrent  light. 
He  proves  that  he  was  sufficiently  acquainted  with  Gi'cek  to 
make  a  useful  application  of  it  in  his  Commentaries ;  that  he 
has  laid  down  clearly  all  those  principles  "which  are  the  stam- 
ina apd  first  elements  of  chaste  and  sound  criticism  ";  that  he 
has  both  diffusely  given  and  condensed  all  the  best  maxims  of 
hermeneutics ;  that  by  the  good  use  of  these,  joined  to  his  nat- 
ural sagacity  and  the  greatness  and  subtlety  of  his  genius,  he 
has  been  most  happy  in  elucidating  the  obscurities  of  Script- 
ure; in  confuting,  by  accurate  research,  the  erroneous  inter- 
pretations of  others;  and  that  he  has  frequently  removed  diffi- 
culties by  acutely  penetrating  the  views  of  the  inspired  writers, 
and  adducing  parallel  texts.     When  the  Vicar  has  again  "six 
weeks"  to  devote  to  the  Fathers,  I  would  recommend  to  him 
the  study  of  the  Saint's  work  ^'■Against  Faustns,''''  where  he 
will  find  critical  rules  for  deciding  among  confiicting  "  various 
readings."     The  "  yard  stick  "  is  gone  out  of  use.     St.  Augus- 
tine's order  is,  first,  to  consult  MSS.  containing  a  more  true  or 
gemune  text ;  secondly,  to  weigh  the  number ;  thirdly,  to  ex- 
amine the  antiquity  of  the  testimonies ;  and  fourthly,  if  the 
point  still  remains  undecided,  to  recur  to  the  originals.    Now, 


342  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipslm. 

as  St.  Augustine  always  practiced  what  lie  preached,  your  read- 
ers will  easily  believe  that  by  such  investigation  he  reached  the 
conclusion  that  Jpsa  was  the  true  reading  of  Genesis  iii.  15. 
But  we  do  not  find  it  recorded  that  he  ever  exhibited  any  dia- 
gram to  his  people,  by  which  he  sought  to  impress  upon  their 
minds  the  "  terrible  consequences "  arising  from  the  "  mis- 
print "  Ipse,  which  St,  Cyprian  had  used.  Evidently  St.  Au- 
gustine taught  what  his  fellow-Catholics  teach  to-day,  that  it 
makes  not  a  particle  of  doctrinal  difference  whether  Ipse,  Ipsa, 
or  Ipsum  be  read,  since  he  found  all  three  in  the  Hebrew, 
Latin,  and  Greek  MSS.  about  him.  Your  readers  will  find  an 
interesting  discussion  on  the  Old  Itala  and  African  versions 
among  Cardinal  Wiseman's  essays.  This  great  linguist  argues 
for  the  African  origin  of  the  first  Latin  translation,  and  his 
theory  is  heartily  adopted  by  the  learned  Anglican  canons, 
Westcott  and  Ilort,  and  others.  But,  father  Gams,  a  Bene- 
dictine monk,  has  simply  annihilated  the  arguments  and  con- 
clusions of  the  Cardinal  and  his  followers. 

I  now  proceed  to  fulfill  a  promise  made  some  time  ago.  In 
his  fifth  letter  the  Vicar  said : 

"  I  am  credibly  infonned  that  no  instance  is  to  be  found  in  any- 
Ecclesiastical  writer  of  even  the  corrupt  reading  Ipsa  beings,  inter- 
preted of  the  Blessed  Virgin  till  St.  Bernard's  time  (12th  century)." 

Here  we  have  Oxford  scholarship  at  its  high-water  mark, — 
the  whole  contingent  "trotted  out"  to  back  up  such  brazenly 
diso-raceful  ignorance.  By  what  blind  fatuity  are  such  people 
led  to  attack  the  Catholic  Church !  Let  me  once  more  instruct 
those  "educated  English  gentlemen." 

What  will  your  readers  say  when  I  tell  them  that  I  now 
have  before  me  the  Greek  and  the  Latin  of  twenty-eight 
ecclesiastical  writers  who  interpret  Ipsa  of  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
beginning  with  St.  Ephrem  (A.D.  362)  and  ending  with  St. 
Bernard,  besides  others  later  than  St.  Bernard.  To  save  my 
now  limited  space  I  will  give  but  a  few.  The  Vicar  and  his 
"lejarned  friends"  can  have  the  rest — mi  demayid.  I  hold 
myself  ready  to  accommodate  them. 

To  commence  with  St.  Ephrem.     Addressing  the  Blessed 


A  Rejoindek.  343 

Virgin,  he  says :"  Salve  paridisus  deliciarum Salve  pura 

quae  draconis  neqiiisslml  caput  contrivisti  et  en  abi/ssu//i  j)7'o- 

jecistivinouUsconatnctum — lluil,  Paradise  of  delights 

Hail,  thou  pure  one  who  crushed  the  head  of  the  most  wicked 
dragon  and  hurled  him  bound  iu  chains  into  the  abyss."  I 
will  make  the  quotations  as  short  as  possible. 

Omitting  St.  Proclus  and  Tarasius,  both  of  Constantinople, 
and  Chrysippus  of  Jerusalem,  I  give  one  from  Pusey's  second 
volume,  which  the  Vicar  either  did  not  see  or  suppressed. 
Ilesychius  of  Jerusalem,  writes : 

"  '  Lo  a  Virgin  shall  conoaive  and  bear  a  Son,  and  they  shall  call 
His  Name  Emmanuel.'  '  Lo,  a  Virgin ! '  What  Virgin?  She  who 
is  the  chosen  of  women,  the  elect  of  Virgins,  tlie  excellent  orna- 
ment of  our  race,  the  boast  of  our  day,  who  freed  Eve  from  shame 
and  Adam  from  threat,  xvho  cut  off  the  boast  of  the  dragon,  when 
the  smoke  of  desire  and  the  word  of  soft  pleasure  hurt  her  not." 

Prudentius  writes : 

Hoc  odium  vetus  illud  erat. 
Hoc  erat  aspidis  atque  hominis 
Digladiabile  discidium, 
Quod  modo  cernua  femineis 
Vipera  proteritur  pedibiis. 

Translated :  ' '  Hence  came  the  enmity  of  old  between  the  serpents 
and  man,  that  inextinguisliable  feud— f^a^  now  the  Viper  pros- 
trate be^ieath  the  wr  lan^sfeet  lies  crushed  and  trampled  on." 

I  have  given  this  with  another  stanza  in  my  liesfume.  Your 
readers  will  remember  that  the  Vicar,  not  being  able  to  meet 
it,  adopted  the  ritualistic  tactics  and  cried  out — "  A  forgery !  " 
He  promised,  however,  to  consult  "friends in  England"  about 
it.  I  do  hope  they  can  help  him  out  !  Prudentius  was  a 
Spaniard  by  birth,  and  died  A.D.  405. 

My  next  authority  is  Claudius  Marius  Victor,  whom  Sidonius 
calls  a  "  most  illustrious  and  learned  man."  He  was  a  native 
of  Marseilles,  and  flourished  about  A.D.  426.  He  wrote  a 
Commentary  on  the  Book  of  Genesis  in  verse,  in  which  he  in- 
troduces our  text  after  this  manner : 


344  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

"  Pedibxis  repes  et  poctore  prono, 
Teque  tuo  Mulier  perimet  cumsemine,  cujua 
Callidus  extremis  tantum  insidiabere  plantis 
Ut  trepidana  etiam  capiti  vestigia  figat." 

Here  the  Almighty  addressee  tbe  serpent : 

"Thou  shalt  crawl  on  thy  pi'ostrate  breast,  and  the  woman  for 
•whose  heel  thou  shalt  lie  in  wait  with  so  much  cunning,  will  crush 
thee  together  with  thy  seed,  so  as  even  with  triumphant  eagerness 
to  plant  her  feet  upon  thy  head." 

These  two  writers  well  illustrate  the  facts  which  I  have 
given  about  Ipsa.  They  prove  that  the  fe)ni7iine  reading  was 
the  authorized  and  popular  reading,  since  it  appears  as  a  matter 
of  course  in  the  religious  works  and  even  poetry  of  parts  of 
the  world  so  distant  from  each  other  as  Milan,  Africa,  Spain, 
and  France.  And  all  this  in  days  prior  to  steam  and  electric- 
ity. Moreover,  St.  Prudentius  and  Victor  were  both  laymen, 
and  would  be  sure  to  adopt  the  popular  version ;  and  I  have 
even  a  more  forcible  quotation  from  Prudentius.  Wbo  can 
believe,  in  presence  of  these  facts,  that  the  reading  crept  for 
the  first  time  into  the  Latin  versions  either  in  the  days  of  St. 
Ambrose  or  St.  Augustine,  as  Pusey  and  his  counterfeits 
ignorantly  assert? 

My  space  is  contracting,  but  I  am  sure  your  readers  will 
thank  me  for  my  next  quotation.  It  is  taken  from  St.  Avitus, 
Bishop  of  Vicnne,  the  most  distinguished  among  all  the  Chris- 
tian poets  from  the  sixth  to  the  eighth  century.  He  became 
Bishop  A.D.  490,  dying  in  525.  His  six  poems  are  in  hexam- 
eter verse.  They  are  :  "  The  Creation,"  (De  Initio  Mundi) ; 
"  Original  Sin,"  (De  Originali  Peccato) ;  "  The  Judgment  of 
God,"  (De  Sententia  Dei);  "The  Deluge,"  (De  Diluvio 
Mundi) ;  "  The  Passage  of  the  Eed  Sea,"  (De  Transitu  Maris 
Rubri) ;  and,  "  In  Praise  of  Virginity,"  (De  Consolatoria 
Laude  Castitatis),  etc.,  addressed  to  his  sister.  The  first  three 
constitute  what  is  called  the  "  Paradise  Lost "  of  St.  Avitus. 
They  were  published  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  from  them 
Milton  borrowed  for  his  work.  Guizot  writes  of  them  as  fol- 
lows: 


*  A  Rejoindkr.  345 

"On  pourrait  I'appeler  le  Paradia  Perdu.  Ce  n'est  point  par  lo 
sujet  et  le  noni  seuls  que  cet  ouvrage  rapelle  celui  de  Milton  ;  les 
ressemblances  8ont  frappwitea  dans  quelques  parties  de  la  concep- 
tion generals  et  dans  quelques-uns  des  plus  iniportants  details." 

And  he  often  gives  the  palm  to  St,  Avitns.  See  Guizot's 
llistoire  de  la  Clmluation  en  France  ^  Guclieval:  De  sancti 
Aviti  VienncB  esjjiscoj)i  openhus,  These  (1863).' 

The  Vicar  may  desire  to  consult  his  "  friends  in  England  " 
— the  poems  may  be  "  forgeries  "  1  Kome  cannot  be  trusted, 
jou  know. 

I  quote  from  "  The  Judgment  of  God,"  the  Creator's  words 
to  the  serpent : 

Praecipue  in  felix  mulier,  cum  prole  futura, 
Tecum  inimicitias  otlio  constante  i-eixinet, 
Seminibusqe  tuis  ejus  cum  semine  bellum 
Perpetuum,  sed  dissimilis  Victoria,  nam  qui 
Anibos  una  opera  vicisti,  subdole  Serpens, 
Olim  erit  ut  sexum  muliebreni  proims  adores, 
Cujica  tu  quanqam  pavidae  insidiabere  calci, 
Conteret  una  caput  tandem  tibi  femina  victrix, 
Naacendunique  etiam  tali  de  stipite  germen. 


'  Since  the  above  was  written,  the  extent  of  Milton's  debt  to  St. 
Avitus  has  been  made  apparent  by  a  learned  Protestant  writer  in 
the  Atlantic  Monthly,  January,  1890,  in  the  article  "A  Precursor 
of  Milton."  It  is  exceedingly  interesting  to  mark  how  faithfully 
the  great  Puritan  poet  copies  and  translates  the  saintly  Cathobo 
Bishop.    At  the  close  of  his  essay  the  writer  asks : 

"  Why  did  Milton  announce  himself  as  undertaking 

'  Things  unattempted  yet  in  prose  or  rhyme  '  ? 

In  view  of  his  familiarity  with  Avitus  the  claim  is  audacious,  not 
to  say  mendacious.  M.  Guizot,  in  reference  to  Avitus,  says  that 
Milton  could  afford  to  imitate,  for  he  could  create.  In  this  view 
there  may  be  a  Protestant  indulgence  for  the  great  Puritan  poet ; 
a  Roman  Catholic  would  probably  judge  him  more  severely.  With- 
out theological  partiality,  one  cannot  but  ask.  How  could  he  stoop 
to  rob  the  forgotten  dead  ?  He  has  rifled  a  venerated  tomb.  Let  us 
forbear  to  push  the  accusation." 


346  Ipse,  li't^A,  Ii-sum. 

The  last  four  liiies  freely  translated  :  "But  a  day  will  come 
when  you  will  crinj^'c  before  the  female  sex,  and  although  you 
will  lie  in  wait  for  her  timorous  heel,  ultimately  one  woman 
victorious  over  you  will  crush  your  head,  as  will  also  the  seed 
to  be  bom  of  Ik  r." 

I  will  give  but  one  more  poetical  quotation,  for  the  benefit 
of  your  classical  readers.  It  is  froiri  Lipsius,  who  with  Isaac 
Casaiibon  aud  Joseph  Scaliger  were  called  the  *'  Literary  Tri- 
nnivirate."  ' 

"Et  quom  non  genium  fuget, 
Et  (juam  non  striga,  quam  sagam 
Magna  magni  Dei  parens? 
De  qua  saei'a  profantur, 
Hanc  fore  quae  aerpentia 
Contereret  caput  improhi. 

This  is  not  to  count  against  the  Yicar,  since  Lipsius  lived 
long  after  St.  Bernard,  having  been  born  A.D.  1547.  But 
why  did  he  not  read  Pusey's  second  volume?  Ahl  he  does 
not  like  it.  Here  are  some  examples  of  the  use  of  Ipsa  in 
connection  with  Mary.  At  p.  324,  St.  John  Damascene,  A.D. 
731  (once  sneered  at  in  the  "  Mission  Church  "),  says  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin : 

"In  this  Eden  the  serpent  found  no  stealthy  entrance.  .  .  .  For 
the  Only  bagotten  Sou  of  God  Himself  ....  formed  Himself  Man 
of  this  Virgin  and  pure  field," 

Again,  at  p.  300,  Pseudo-Origen  (some  Latin  writer  later, 
Pusey  thinks,  than  St.  Jerome,  A.D.  385)  represents  an  angel 
addressing  mothers  in  these  words :  "  Hear  ye,  that  a  virgin  shall 
be  with  child,  ....  who  loas  neither  deceived  hy  persuasion 
of  the  serpent,  nor  infected  hy  his  venomous  hreath^  And 
again  at  p.  161,  the  great  St.  Bruno,  A.D.  1086,  fifty  years 
perhaps  before  St.  Bernard,  writes : 

"The  first  head  of  this  line  is  Adam;  the  second  is  Clirist.  This 
line  begins  in  Eve  and  ends  in  Mary.  In  the  beginning  was  death; 
and  in  the  end  is  life.  Death  was  caused  by  Eve;  life  was  restored 
thi'ough  Liary.  Eve  was  conquered  by  the  Devil ;  Mary  bound  and 
conquered  the  Devil  For  since  the  line  is  extended  from  Eve  to 
her,  in  her  at  length  that  Hook  was  bound  and  Incarnate,  through 


A    IIUOINDKK.  347 

whom  that  Leviathan  was  taken,  the  old  Serpent  who  is  the  Devil 
and  Satan,  that  he  who  entei-ed  his  Kingdom  tlirongh  a  woman, 
should  be  drawn  out  of  his  Kingdom  through  a  woman." 

Your  readers  can  now  form  an  estimate  of  the  value  of  any 
statement  made  by  the  "educated  English  gentlemen "  from 
Oxford,  and  their  "  learned  friends." 

PO8T80KIPT. 

I  am  happy  to  offer  to  my  readers  some  interesting  evidence 
in  support  of  Ij)sa.  It  is  nothing  less  than  the  famous  Codex 
Amiatinus,  the  oklest  and  must  excellent  of  all  the  Latin  ilSS., 
no\v  in  the  Laurentian  Library,  Florence.  It  contains  the 
whole  Vulgate  Bible  except  the  I3ook  of  Baruch.  T'.ie 
witness  through  whom  I  introduce  it  is  Tischendorf.  Among 
Protestants  he  is  confessedly  the  most  consummate  of  Biblical 
critics,  since  he  is  said  to  have  "  crowned  the  edifice  "  of  Biblical 
Criticism.  In  1873,  shortly  before  his  death,  completing  the 
work  of  Heyse,  he  edited  this  MS.  in  his  critical  edition  of  the 
Latin  Old  Testament,  now  before  me.  In  the  text  he  gives 
Ipsa,  and  in  his  note  thereon,  after  discussing  its  origin,  he 
very  clearly  and  simply  states  the  Catholic  meaning  of  it  thus : 
"  Ipsa,  i.e.,  mxdicr per  semen  siium — She,  that  is,  the  woman 
through  her  seed,"  shall  crush  the  serpent's  head.  This  is 
what  I  have  repeated  over  and  over  again.  The  learned  Prot- 
estant Grotius  expresses  agreement  with  Tischendorf  in  these 
words  (already  quoted) :  "  The  Vulgate  has  Ipsa,  as  if  it  were 
spoken  of  the  woman,  but  in  a  sense  not  improper." 

Tischendorf  also  gives  a  beautiful  fac-simile  specimen  of 
this  great  MS.,  in  large  uncials,  in  which  our  text  reads  thus : 

"  IPSA  OONTEUET  CAPUT  TUUM." 

Here  again  I  beg  to  refer  my  readers  to  Bishop  "Walton's 
Polyglot  Translations  of  the  Chaldaic  Paraphrases.  In  the 
paraphrase  of  Jonathan-ben-Ussel,  the  common  opinion  of  the 
ancient  Hebrews  when  explaining  Geyiesis  iii.  15,  is  ex- 
pressed as  follows :  "  A  remedy  will  truly  exist  for  them 
(Adam  and  Eve),  but  not  for  thee  (the  tempter) ;  for  they 
shall  crush  thy  heel  in  the  latter  days,  in  the  days  of  the  King 


348  Ipse,  Ipsa,  IrsiM. 

Messiah."  Again,  to  accentuate  the  bond  which  identities 
Mary — the  Woman — with  the  combat  and  triumph  of  her 
seed,  the  Chaldaic  Paraphrasers  use  one  sole  pronoun  which 
embraces  the  two  readings — Ipse^  Ipsa,  and  they  read  :  "  They 
shall  hruise  thy  headP  See  Dissertations  on  the  Messiah,  by 
Jacquelet,  p.  79  ;  First  Letter  from  a  Converted  liabhin,  p.  57. 

Let  me  say  a  parting  word  on  St.  Jerome's  testimony.  He 
publislied  his  version  of  tlio  Pentateuch  A.D.  40-i.  In  liis 
translation,  at  least  in  what  is  supposed  to  be  the  genuine 
transcript,  as  it  has  been  published  by  Vallarsius  and  Maffei, 
ho  uses  Ipse,'  furthermore,  he  adopts  it  in  his  book  l>e 
Quaestt.  Ilehraicis  iii  Gen.,  where  he  is  writing  critically. 
But  in  his  own  works,  in  common  with  St.  Augustine  and  the 
rest,  ho  adoj)ted  Ipsa  (See  Comment,  in  Isaiam,  I.  xvi.,  c.  58, 
in  vers.  12).  This  surely  aflfords  us  another  and  independent 
proof  of  the  antiquity  and  authority  of  Ipsa.  For,  that  such 
an  enthusiast  for  the  Hebrew  text,  as  St.  Jerome  proved  him- 
self to  be,  should  have  retained  a  reading,  which  he  rejected 
as  a  Biblical  scholar,  is  inconceivable — except  on  the  hypothesis 
that  it  was  already  so  strongly  stereotyped  in  the  memory  of 
the  faithful,  as  to  deter  him  from  attempting  to  innovate  ujion 
it  in  his  excgetic  works  (See  Father  Harper,  1.  c). 

I  have  before  me,  and  beg  to  refer  my  classical  readers  to 
the  learned  work  of  the  Jesuit,  Father  Corluy,  Professor  of 
Sacred  Scrii)ture  in  Louvain  University,  entitled :  Spicilegium, 
Dogniatico-B  ill  ieu  m . 

R.  F.  Q. 


LETTER  XXIX. 

IPSE,    IPSA,    IPSUM — A   EEJOINDEB. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — I  have  now  a  word  to  say  on  Ipsum.  "We  have 
throughout  this  discussion  been  speaking  of  Latin  words 
— Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum,  and  the  masculine,  feminine,  and  neuter 
genders  in  Greek,  Latin,  and  English.     As  in  French,  so  in 


A  Rejoinder.  349 

Hebrew  and  tbe  cognate  Semitic  languages,  there  is  no  neuter 
gender ;  but  for  the  sake  of  simplicity,  and  to  accommodate 
myself  to  the  mode  of  speech  used  by  the  Latin  writers  whom 
I  quoted,  I  made  no  distinction,  in  respect  of  gender,  between 
Hebrew  and  Greek  and  Latin.  Here,  then,  a  word  of  expla- 
nation may  not  be  out  of  place  for  the  unlearned  reader. 

In  Hebrew  there  are  but  two  forms  of  the  pronoun — "  IIu — 
//<;"  and  " //«' — She''''\  and  yet  De  liossi,  s])eaking  in  refei- 
ence  to  Latin,  says  "that  the  true  reading  of  the  sacred  text  is 
IIu,  Ipse,  IpsumP  So,  many  of  the  Latin  authorities  which 
I  cited  say  that  the  Hebrew  text  is  Ipsiim,  Avhile  others  say 
that  it  is  fyse.  Jjoth  are  correct,  since  every  Hebrew  author- 
ity iov  Ipse  is  also  one  ior  Ipstwi  •  and  it  is  the  same  fur 
Greek.  In  like  manner,  Fusey,  with  reference  to  English, 
says  that  the  Hebrew  text  ought  to  be  rendered  '*  It,"  or  "•  He 
shall  bruise  thy  head."  Thus  we  see  that  Greek,  Latin,  and 
English  writers  speak  of  translation  from  the  Hebrew  into 
their  own  several  languages  according  to  the  grammatical 
capabilities  of  these  languages  as  to  gender.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  Protestant  translation  of  our  text  in  both  forms  of  tlie 
pronoun,  as  directed  by  Pusey : 

"  1  will  put  enmity  between  thee  and  the  woman,  and  be- 
tween thy  seed  and  her  seed.  It  shall  bruise  thy  head,"  etc.; 
and 

"  I  will  put  enmity  between  thee  and  the  woman,  and  be- 
tween thy  seed  and  her  seed^'  He  shall  bruise  tliy  head,"  etc. 

In  the  Jirsi  form,  the  pronoun  "  It  "  remains  simply  level 
with  its  antecedent  "  seed,''^  the  mere  word  in  the  neuter  gen- 
der, and  it  expresses  nothing  more. 

In  the  second  form,  the  translator  has  risen  above  the  mere 
word  "  seed,'*^  seized  tbe  idea  signified  by  it,  which  is  Cbrist, 
and  expressed  it  by  the  pronoun  "  /A',"  referring  immediately 
to  Christ  and  only  indirectly  to  "seed." 

Now,  as  this  mental  process  is  tbe  philosophy  of  the  mascu- 
line and  the  neuter  "  He  "  and  "  It "  in  tbe  English  Protestant 
translation,  so  it  is  the  philosophy  of  the  masculine  and  the 
neuter,  "^Iwtos"  and  "^m^o"  in  the  Greek,  and  "7^;st'"  and 
"  Ij)sum "  in  those  Latin  translations  which  reject  "  Ipsa.^^ 


350  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

As  then,  when  speaking  of  English,  we  say  that  the  Hebrew 
has  "7/e"  or  "7^,"  so  when  speaking  of  Latin  and  Greek  we 
say  that  the  Hebrew  has  "  Ij)se  "  or  "  Ipsum. "  and  "  Autos  " 
or  "^w^o,"  respectively.  Hence  Cardinal  Patrizi  and  De 
liossi  quote  their  Semitic  authorities  in  support  of  "  Ipse " 
and  "  Ijjsum "  indifferently,  just  as  apologists  for  the  Greek 
"  Autos  "  and  "  Auto  "  would  do.  Here  let  me  state  distinctly 
that  Alontfaucon  mentions  Greek  MSS.  of  the  Septuagint, 
which  have  the  neuter  "  Aiitoy  This  is  confirmed  by  Wright 
in  his  I'ook  of  Genesis  in  Hebrew,  for  an  extract  from  which 
I  am  indebted  to  the  very  obliging  and  courteous  theological 
Librarian  of  the  Protestant  University  of  Princeton,  New 
Jersey. 

Where  is  Bishop  Kingdon's  little  "  diagram "  ?  Echo  an- 
swers— Where  !  But,  what  is  more  serious,  there  rests  upon 
him  the  grave  obligation,  either  to  correct  his  blunder  and  re- 
tract his  outrageous  misstatement  based  upon  it,  or  to  defend 
it  either  by  himself,  or  with  the  aid  of  some  Vicar  qualified 
for  the  task.  The  intelligent  public  can  be  satisfied  with  noth- 
ing less,  and  a  "  teacher  in  Israel "  ought  not  to  be. 

I  must  now  gather  up  a  few  dropped  threads  and  hasten  to 
a  conclusion. 

In  a  short  paragraph  near  the  end  of  his  last  "  Stricti  re," 
the  Vicar  starts  a  new  objection,  based  on  the  alleged  silence 
of  Scripture,  and  to  the  effect  that  the  general  spirit  of  the 
Gospels  is  altogether  adverse  to  the  Catholic  view  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin.  To  this  particular  objection  I  have  not  at  all  addressed 
myself.  I  was  engaged  solely  in  answering  his  charges 
of  "Idolatry,"  "Impiety,"  "Infidelity,"  and  "Apostasy," 
which  he  based  upon  the  language  of  our  devotions  to  her.  I 
felt  and  know  that  these  charges  do  and  should  influence  Prot- 
estants more  profoundly  than  any  other,  and  I  think  your 
candid  readers  will  admit  that  I  have  unanswerably  confronted 
them.  This  i:ew  objection  in  tiecnty  lines  would  require  a 
series  of  letters  with  which  I  cannot  ask  to  trespass  on  you 
now.  In  reply  to  it,  however,  I  can  maintain,  that  no  con- 
clusion of  Euclid  is  more  rigorously  demonstrable  than  is  the 
direct  contradictory  of  this  Protestant  allegation.     The  one 


A    Ee JOINDER.  351 

implication  of  tlie  Gospel  narrative,  I  most  confidently  assert, 
is  that  Mary's  position  is  immeasurably  exalted  above — nay,  is 
essentially  different  in  kind  from — that  of  any  other  of  her 
Son's  redeemed.  Will  Bishop  Kingdon  give  me  the  freedom 
of  the  Anglican  pulpits  in  this  city  for  four  consecutive  Sun- 
days on  this  text :  "  Mary,  the  Mother  of  Jesus,  in  Prophecy 
and  its  Fiillllment  intei-preted  by  Antiquity?"  "Scripture 
interpreted  by  Antiquity,"  is  Pusey's  standard — the  ablest  man 
Anglicanism  has  had  since  Cardinal  Newman's  reversion.  I  will 
accept  that  standard  pro  hue  vice.  My  "  Orders,"  too,  are  all 
right,  and  I  will  not  appeal  either  to  i\  2>fioto(jraph  of  the  "  Lam- 
beth Register "  in  proof  of  their  validity,  as  did  he  recently, 
among  the  "  Anecdotes  of  the  Lambeth  Conference,"  in  sup- 
port of  his.  Or,  will  Bishop  Kingdon  lead  out  his  Oxford 
"  contingent " — a  dozen  if  he  has  them — and  calmly  discuss 
the  proposition  I  have  alleged,  at  any  time  or  place,  and  before 
any  audience  ?  Let  there  be  no  shilly-shally  about  this  matter. 
I  want  these  "  English  gentlemen  "  to  feel  assured  that  one  of 
the  "poor  Irish  "  in  this  Diocese,  where  "  Eomanism  is  very 
Low  Chnrcli,-^  as  the  Yicar  writes,  is  ready  and  able  to  vindi- 
cate against  their  united  forces  the  position  assigned  to  the 
ever-blessed  mother  of  his  Redeemer,  by  the  Catholic  Cinirch, 
in  the  divine  economy  of  man's  salvation.  Your  readers  have 
received  bnt  an  installment  of  that  vindication  in  this  Re- 
ooinder — a  few  pearls  from  the  lap  of  Holy  Church,  which  I 
have  tried  to  string  into  a  Rosary  to  lay  in  homage  at  blessed 
Mary's  feet — a  few  shells  from  the  shore  of  that  boundless 
ocean  of  Catholic  truth  which  laves  the  throne  of  the  Eternal, 
as  an  humble  rej)aration  for  the  insults  offered  her  by  Anglican 
Bishops  and  their  Vicars  the  world  over.  I  have,  in  this  part 
of  my  subject,  cited  no  authorities,  but  consistently  and 
throughout  appealed  to  reason  pure  and  sim])le.  I  leave  to 
your  attentive  readers  to  say  what  measure  of  success  has  at- 
tended my  labors.  On  another  occasion,  I  will  give  a  list  of 
books  in  which  they  can  make  deeper  studies. 

And  now  a  word  on  the  Strossmaycr  episode.  Since  writing 
on  this  matter,  an  important  piece  of  evidence  has  come  to 
hand  in  absolute  confirmation  of  what  I  then  proved.     Cardi- 


352  Ipse,  Ipsa,  L'sum. 

nal  Manning's  word  will  be  taken  the  world  over,  at  its  face. 
AVell,  he  has  written  a  work  entitled,  "  The  True  Story  of  the 
Vatican  Council,"  in  which  we  get  the  "  true  story  "  of  the 
Vicar's  "famous  speech  of  Strossniayer,"  which  he  hoped 
would  be  so  "advantageous  to  our  Church,"  were  it  only 
printed  in  the  Church  Eclectic.  At  page  164  of  the  Cardi- 
nal's book,  he  is  speaking  of  the  falsehoods  circulated  about 
the  doings  of  the  Council,  and  he  proceeds  as  follows : 

"  But,  in  truth,  tlie  Italian  papers  and  the  Augsburg  Gazette  are 
the  chief  sources  of  these  mendacious  exaggei-atious.  An  Italian 
pajier  gave  in  full  the  speech  of  Bishop  Btrossmayer,  who  was  the 
subject  of  one  of  these  Houieric  counnotions.  In  that  speech  he 
was  matle  to  apostrojihize  by  name,  as  present  before  him  and  as  a 
chief  offender,  a  Bishop  who  was  not  there  at  all  to  be  aijostrophized. 
When  the  speech  had  gone  the  roinid  of  Eui-ojie  in  a  polyglot  ver- 
sion. Bishop  Strossmayer  in  a  Roman  paper  denounced  it  as  a  forg- 
ery, and  his  letter  has  again  and  again  been  repi'inted  in  England. 
Nevei'theless,  the  speech  is  i-eprinted  continually  at  this  day  at  Glas- 
gow and  Belfast,  and  so^vn  broadcast  by  post  over  these  kingdoms, 
and  probably  whereVer  the  English  tongue  is  sijoken." 

My  copy  is  printed  at  Belfast,  and  on  it  the  announcement 
is  made  that  "  Persons  Avishing  quantities  for  yratnitous  dis- 
irihuiion  will  be  liheralhj  treated.''''  It  would  be  interesting 
to  know  what  discount  the  Vicar  got  on  his  "  gratuitous  dis- 
tributions." This  is  the  document  of  which  the  Vicar  wrote  : 
"  It  is  the  finest  thing  1  hiow  of  on  the  oj)position  side  !  " 
Of  course  the  "  Strictures  "  had  not  then  been  written — else 
Strossmayer's  "  speech  "  was  nowhere.  Would  it  not  be  "  ad- 
vantageous to  our  Church  "  to  send  them  to  the  Church  Eclectio 
— without  the  Rejoinder  f  Because  j.  exposed  his  crime 
against  Bishop  Strossmayer  and  truth,  he  has  charged  me  with 
"  defaming  "  his  character ;  but  surely  a  hawker  of  forgeries 
has  no  character  to  be  defamed,  especially  when  he  makes  a 
hypocritical  pretence  of  a  fondness  for  testing  his  wares  by  a 
"  yard  stick  "  and  "  critical  apparatus."  But  perhaps  he  will 
plead  ignorance  of  the  imposture.  It  may  be ;  but  then  he 
will  save  but  a  remnant  of  honesty  at  the  expense  of  his  judg- 
ment, for  no  intelligent  Protestant,  not  to  speak  of  a  "  Catho* 


A  Rejoindkr.  353 

lie  Protestant,"  ought  to  be  deceived  by  the  forged  "  Speech." 
But  let  us  .await  the  reparation.  Meanwhile,  I  have  set  a  trap 
to  test  the  honesty  of  this  Oxford  innocent,  and,  ten  to  one,  he 
will  walk  straight  into  it.     We  will  see. 

On  the  subject  of  Ritualism  I  have  barely  touched  in  these 
Letters.  Beginning  with  a  purely  critical  question,  the  Vicar, 
most  insultingly  and  illogically,  introduced  and  provoked  a  dis- 
cussion on  Catliolic  devotion  to  the  Mother  of  God,  and  I  felt 
obliged  "  to  run  him  down."  I  kept  simply  to  the  point,  and 
turned  neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left,  till  he  had  disap- 
peared. He  has  stated  his  case,  given  his  "  wider  view  of  the 
cultus  of  the  Virgin,"  and  constructed  his  "  treasury  of  argu- 
ment "  against  "  Romanists."  Of  this  fabric,  builded  with  so 
much  love,  I  have  left  not  one  stone  upon  another.  The  dis- 
cussion is  therefore  logically  at  an  end,  saving  to  the  Vicar  a 
right  to  clear  himself,  if  haply  he  can,  from  some  of  the 
crimes  charged  and  proved  against  him.  To  his  explanations 
I,  of  course,  claim  the  right  to  reply.  Having  thus  performed 
my  task,  I  am  hereafter  a  free  lance.  If  he  gives  me  occa^ 
sion,  I  will  consider  Ritualism  root  and  branch — as  well  in  re- 
lation to  the  Catholic  Church,  her  doctrines,  rites,  and  cere- 
monies, as  in  relation  to  the  Anglican  Church,  her  Homilies, 
Articles,  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and  the  late  Lambeth  Con- 
ference. From  my  complete  Ritualistic  library — "  cribs  "  of 
Catholic  books  for  the  most  part — I  will  exhibit  the  theological 
piracy  and  freebootery  by  which  Ritualism  lives,  and  I  will 
expose  its  hideous  hypocrisy  and  dishonesty,  as  it  never  has  been 
exposed  in  this  city.  Remember,  I  am  speaking  of  Riiualhm, 
not  Hitualists  generally,  though  the  Vicar's  tactics  in  this  dis- 
cussion have  well  illustrated  some  of  its  worst  vices.  Was  ever 
hypocrisy  more  audacious  than  to  protest  to  have  no  desire  "  of 
wounding  any  person's  feelings,"  when  he  attacks  with  satanic 
fury  all  that  we  hold  to  be  true  and  sacred  ?  Was  ever  hypocrisy 
carried  to  a  greater  extent  than  his  bitter  assaults  on  the  char- 
acter of  Popes  and  Cardinals,  Bishops  and  Priests  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church — "  not  to  oflFend,"  he  says,  "  but  for  truth's  sake  "  ? 
He  talk  of  truth  and  charity  1  lie  talk  of  candor  and  honesty  ! 
Ah  I   we  have  heard  before  of  such  champions  of  sincerity  : 


354  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

The  Devil  was  sick,  the  Devil  a  monk  would  be : 
The  Devil  was  well,  the  Devil  a  monk  was  he. 

Yet,  I  would  not  be  thought  out  of  sympathy  with  Ritualism 
in  itself,  and  apart  from  the  hypocrisy  which  it  is  made  to 
subserve ;  because,  as  the  Anglican  Dean  Hook  so  well  said,  it 
is  "  doing  the  work  of  the  Church  of  Rome  while  eating  the 
bread  of  the  Church  of  England."  It  is  one  of  the  best  mis- 
sionaries that  the  Catholic  Church  has,  inasmuch  as  it  is  famil- 
iarizing the  Protestant  mind,  and  indoctrinating  it,  with  Catholic 
principles,  truths,  and  views  of  truths,  to  which  it  is  such  a 
stranger,  but  to  which,  however,  it  would  not  listen  if  they 
came  in  full  Catholic  garb.  It  gets  a  hearing  for  Catholic  doc- 
trine in  quarters  to  which  the  ordinary  missionary  has  no  access. 
It  cannot,  indeed,  be  said  of  every  mind :  "  Jla  saisilaverite 
jparcequ^  il  a  saisi  les  ensembles  /  "  but  honest  and  thoughtful 
minds  in  Ritualism,  who  are  earnestly  searching  for  the  truth 
amid  the  doctrinal  chaos  of  Anglicanism,  must  sooner  or  later 
connect  facts  with  the  principles  that  give  them  vitality.  To 
many  such.  Ritualism  has  been  the  vestibule  from  which  they 
have  entered  into  peace  and  joy  in  the  bosom  of  the  Catholic 
Church.  The  latest  example  is  the  Rev.  Luke  Rivington  of 
Oxford,  and  I  would  commend  to  the  Vicar  his  learned  little 
work,  entitled :  "  Authority ;  or,  a  Plain  Reason  for  Joining 
the  Church  of  Rome,"  another  illustration  of  the  great  argu- 
ment— If  Theist,  why  not  Christian,  if  Christian,  why  not 
Catholic,  as  the  true  issue  of  religious  polemic  to-day. 

Another  reason  for  my  sympathy  with  Ritualism  is  suggested 
by  the  beautiful  words  of  St.  Augustine :  ''^llli  in  vos  sacviant, 
qui  nesciunt  cum  quo  labore  verum,  inveniatur,  et  gtiam  diffi- 
cile caveantur  errwes :  Let  those  who  rage  against  you,  who 
know  not  with  what  labor  truth  is  discovered,  and  with  what 
difficulty  errors  are  avoided."  God  forbid  that  any  Catholic 
should  speak  words  of  bitterness  or  scorn  about  those  Angli- 
cans and  Ritualists  who,  though  it  may  be  with  limping  gait, 
are  slowly  retracing  their  steps  after  the  wanderings  of  three 
hundred  years.  On  the  contrary,  we  should  rather  kneel  in 
reverence  with  uncovered  heads  as  they  draw  nearer.  But  the 
bitterest  ridicule,  the  most  stinging  satire,  and  the  severest  re- 


A  Rejoindek.  355 

crimination  would  make  too  light  a  scourge  for  those  pseudo- 
"  Priests  "  who,  while  they  assume  the  garments — hoth  lit- 
erary and  material — of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  persuade  the 
wanderers  that  they  are  the  accredited  officers  of  the  Great 
King,  and  that  the  wanderers  themselves  are  already  safe  in 
His  Kingdom.  I  have  not  for  a  moment  shrunk  from  bring- 
ing, and  urging,  and  proving  such  a  charge  against  the  Yicar. 
"  It  is  the  bounden  duty,"  he  says,  "  of  those  who  know  the 
truth  to  speak  out  boldly  at  the  risk  of  exciting  anger,  opposi- 
tion, and  reproach,  or  of  being  misunderstood."  I  fondly  trust 
that  his  candor  will  duly  appreciate  my  motive :  I,  too,  have 
spoken  out — "  not  to  offend,  but  for  truth's  sake."  May  God 
prosper  the  word,  that  it  fall  not  on  stony  ground ! 

While  on  this  topic,  let  me  inform  your  readers  tliat  Little- 
dale's  "  Plain  Reasons  " — the  Vicar's  theological  text-book  and 
"  critical  apparatus  " — has  been  "  kicked  out "  by  the  Protest- 
ant Association  since  this  discussion  commenced.  It  had  be- 
come so  discredited  under  the  fire  of  its  critics,  Protestant  and 
Catholic,  that  it  had  to  go.  My  authority  for  this  statement  is 
a  London  paper  which  I  have  unfortunately  mislaid,  and  for 
which  I  have  lately  hunted  in  vain.  This  statement,  iiowever, 
can  be  verified,  or  corrected,  if  untrue.  Your  readers  will  eas- 
ily credit  it  when  I  tell  them  that  the  Rev.  Dr.  Lee,  an  An- 
glican minister,  himself  very  High  Church,  has  pointed  out 
and  tabulated  two  hundred  and  one  mistakes,  as  follows : 

Regarding  Historical  facts, 61 

"  Dogmatic  facts 43 

"  luaccui-ate  quotations  from  writings  on  history  and 

Canon  Law, 29 

Regarding  historical  and  theological  quotations  half -made,  often 

with  remarkable  omissions  or  qualifications,  .  .  .  .30 
Regarding  quotations  from  the  Fathei-s,  which,  when  sought 

out,  are  found  to  bear  an  entirely  different  meaning  from  that 

which  Dr.  Littledale  puts  upon  them 24 

Confusing  the  personal  opinion  of  Catholics  with  the  defined 

doctrines  of  the  Church, 17 

Assuming  that  current  opinions  of  theologians  are  without 

doubt  defined  dogmas, 7 

Total 201 


856  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Dr.  Lee  adds  :  "  Every  edition  of  Littledale's  book  receives 
fresh  corrections,  while  in  several  cases  the  corrections  are 
equally  inaccurate  with  the  statement  presumed  to  be  cor- 
rected." To  the  edition  of  1881,  the  last  I  have  seen,  are  pre- 
fixed 29  pages  of  closely  printed  "  additions  and  corrections  " 
■ — mainly  the  latter,  in  all  13,340  words  of  errata.  Pretty 
good  showing  for  a  book  of  200  pages !  Some  other  time  I 
will  give  your  readers  Littledale's  history.' 

At  the  close  of  the  last  "  Stricture,"  the  Vicar  says :  "  I  shall 
not  shrink  from  encountering  any  advocate  of  (the  Immacu- 
late Conception)  if  you  feel  disposed  to  open  your  columns 
for  the  discussion."  Ye  Gods!  Why, I  will  lay  a  wager  the 
man  does  not  knovv  any  more  about  it  than  did  Pusey  when 
he  wrote  the  first  volume  of  Eirenicon^  and  in  using  these 
words  he  had  his  eye  on  Pusey's  "  Scraps,"  with  which  he 
would  like  to  fill  your  columns,  as  he  did  on  other  occasions. 
The  Yicar  discuss  the  Immaculate  Conception  !  lla !  Ha !  t 
Ha ! ! !  Now,  this  mild  offer  to  appear  in  a  "  wider  area  than 
the  Institute,"  implies  some  knowledge  of  Theology.  And, 
what  is  Theology  ?  It  is  the  philosophy  of  Revelation ;  in 
other  words,  it  is  the  result  of  applying  to  revealed  dogmata 
the  methods  and  principles  of  philosophy.  But  the  Vicar 
could  get  no  sound  Christian  philosophy  at  Oxford,  and  there- 
fore luckily  for  himself  got  none.  Oxford,  the  capital  of  An- 
glicanism, has  given  up  the  profession  of  Christianity  in  its 
educational  capacity.  Two  anti-Christian  philosophies  in  the 
very  opposite  poles  of  thought  are,  not  so  much  striving  for 
pre-eminence  there  as  joint-tenants  in  full  possession  to-day. 
Listen  to  Canon  Liddon : 

' '  Cases  have  come  ivithin  my  oum  experience  of  men  wlio  have 
come  up  to  school  as  Christians,  and  have  been  earnest  Christians 
up  to  the  time  of  beffinning  to  read  philosophy  for  the  final  school, 
but  who,  during  the  year  and  a  half  or  two  years  employed  in  this 
study,  have  suiTendered  first  their  Christianity  and  next  their  belief 
in  God,  and  have  left  the  University  not  believing  in  a  Supreme 
Beingy 

A  similar  account  is  given  by  Mr.  Appleton,  a  member  of 
'  See  Appendix  C  for  full  text  of  Dr.  Lee's  Letter. 


A  Rejoinder.  357 

the  "  Select  Coirmiittce  of  tlie  House  of  Lords  on  University 
Tests  "  with  Canon  Liddon.     He  pays : 

"  I  think  it  is  quite  impossible  for  any  man  to  throw  himself  into 
the  system  of  education  for  the  final  classical  school  ....  with- 
out having  the  whole  edifice  of  his  belief  shaken  to  the  very  foun- 
dation.''— First  Report,  pp.  44,  69. 

This  was  written  seventeen  years  ago,  but  we  see  its  prac- 
tical results  to-day  in  "  liohert  Eh^ncrcP  I  say  nothing  about 
the  argumentative  value  of  the  novel,  because  Anglicanism  can 
attend  to  its  own  funeral ;  but  I  think  it  most  ungallant  of 
Anglican  parsons  especially,  to  rail  at  the  authoress,  because 
she  who  "  knows  Oxford  well  "  simply  gives  an  "  Oxford  pict- 
ure of  Oxford  influences,"  and  is  only  in  accord  with  Canon 
Liddon.  The  Quarterly  lievieio  for  October,  1888,  says  that 
Christianity  is  regarded  at  the  college  described  in  the  book  as 
an  open  question,  that  aspirants  for  holy  orders  are  told  by 
their  tutors  that  the  faith  they  intend  to  preach  is  only  a  re- 
spectable mythology,  and  that  the  government  and  discipline 
of  Oxford  are  now  committed  to  men  who  are  emancipated 
from  obligations  to  any  form  of  belief — to  philosophical  deists 
and  hopeless  skeptics.  Cardinal  Newman's  prophecies  on 
"  Liberalism  "  at  Oxford  have  been  verified  to  the  letter.  See 
'"'' Apologia^''  pp.  57-62.  Now  it  is  evident  that  the  Vicar 
never  reached  the  "final  schools"  described  by  Canon  Liddon, 
but  rather  took  to  Ritualism,  which  has  appropriated  to  itself 
enough  of  Catholic  principles  and  teaching,  always  "  instinct 
like  relics  with  supernatural  power,"  to  justify  W^^i  2^crhajps 
as  a  phase  of  Christianity.  This,  however,  is  no  reason  why 
he  should  think  himself  qualified  to  discuss  a  theological  topic 
like  the  Immaculate  Conception.  Upon  this  question  I  have 
not  entered,  nor  is  it  now,  thanks  be  to  God,  at  all  necessary, 
for  I  assure  your  readers  and  I  am  prepared  to  prove,  in  any 
manner  acceptable  to  Bishop  Kingdon  and  his  Vicar,  that 
Pusey  in  his  second  volume,  and  in  published  letters  and 
speeches  which  I  have,  accepted  and  believed  the  doctrine 
itself  as  defined  by  the  Catholic  Church ;  and  more,  that  he 
strongly  urges  its  fitness  and  truth  from  its  analogy  to  the 
sanctification  of  Jeremias  and  John  the  Baptist  expressly  re- 


358  Ipse,  Ipisa,  Ipsum. 

vealed  in  Holy  Scripture.  What  a  triumph  for  Catholic  truth  I 
The  greatest  and  most  Catholic-minded  intellect,  after  New- 
man, that  the  Anglican  Church  has  ever  produced  kneeling  in 
homage  at  Mary's  feet  1  Praised  and  blessed  forever  be  her 
Immaculate  Conception  !  Pusey's  second  volume  is  a  perfect 
Jlosanna  to  the  Blessed  Virgin,  and  it  is  a  simple  delight  to  a 
Catholic  to  read  it.  Indeed,  there  is  nothing  more  "  advan- 
tageous to  ouB  Church,"  in  English.  By  all  means,  "  let 
every  lover  of  Christian  truth  secure  a  copy  "  1  Had  the  Vicar 
read  it  when  ho  gave  this  advice?  Or,  is  he  after  all  but  a 
"  Jesuit  in  disguise  "  ? 

When  Pusey  wrote  the  first  volume  of  the  Eirenicon  he  did 
not  even  understand  this  doctrine,  and  while  Father  Newman 
told  him  so,  he  gave  him  a  singularly  lucid  exposition  of  it. 
Afterwards,  Pusey  went  to  France  and  spent  some  months 
among  the  French  Bishops,  and  sojourned  notably  with  the 
great  Dupanloup.  On  his  return  to  England  he  wrote  the  sec- 
ond volume,  addressed  to  Father  Newman,  in  which  he  ex- 
presses himself  perfectly  satisfied  with  the  doctrine  as  explained 
by  him  and  Dupanloup.  Will  the  Vicar,  after  he  has  care- 
fully studied  Pusey's  words,  dare  assert  that  Pusey  rejects  the 
doctrine  of  Mary's  Immaculate  Conception  as  defined  by  the 
Catholic  Church  ?  Of  course  I  must  honestly  say  that  I  doubt 
his  ability,  through  lack  of  theological  training,  even  to  read 
the  mattens  involved  understandingly,  since  Pusey  himself  dis- 
plays a  strange  bewilderment  on  the  meaning  o-f  some  of  the 
details  of  the  Church's  definition.  He  is  modest  enough,  how- 
ever, to  ask  Father  Newman,  for  "  an  explanation  which  would 
remove  diflSculties"  on  some  speculative  aspects  of  it,  but  on 
which  the  Church  has  not  pronounced, 

A  few  words  of  advice  to  the  Vicar.  While  Cardinal  New- 
man was  yet  an  Anglican,  he  said  "  hard  things,"  as  he  con- 
fesses, against  the  Catholic  Church.  He  became  a  Catholic  in 
October,  1845.  Nearly  three  years  hefore  that,  he  drew  up 
and  published  a  document,  dated  December  12,  1842  (now  be- 
fore me),  containing  a  formal  "  Retraction  "  of  those  "  hard 
things."  He  had  spoken  in  his  writings  of  doctrines  of  the 
Catholic  Church  as  "  unscriptural,"  "  profane,"   "  impious," 


A  Rejoinder.  359 

"blasphemous";  and  said,  among  other  severe  things,  that 
"  we  ought  to  treat  (Popish  Rome)  as  if  she  were  that  evil  one 
which  governs  her."  He  closes  his  "peccavi  "  document  with 
these  words : 

"If  you  ask  me  how  an  individual  could  venture  not  simply  to 
hold,  but  to  publish  such  views  of  a  communion  so  ancient,  so 
wide-spreading,  so  fruitful  in  saintr  I  answer,  that  I  said  to  my- 
self, '  I  am  not  speaking  my  own  words,  I  am  but  following  almost 
a  conaenarta  of  the  divines  of  my  church.  They  have  ever  used 
the  strongest  language  against  Rome,  even  the  most  able  and  most 
learned  of  them.  I  wish  to  throw  myself  into  their  system.  Wliile 
I  say  what  they  say  I  am  safe.  Such  views,  too,  are  necessary  for 
our  position.'  Yet  I  have  reason  to  fear  still  that  such  language 
is  to  be  ascribed,  in  no  small  measure,  to  an  impetuous  temper,  a 
hope  of  approving  myself  to  persons  I  respect  and  a  wish  to  repel 
the  charge  of  Romanism." 

Remember,  this  was  written  while  an  Anglican  minister. 
Why,  then,  did  he  withdraw  categorically  these  "  hard  things  " 
while  still  in  the  Anglican  church?  He  found  o\it  that  he 
had  been  deceived  hy  the  divines  of  his  own  church!  Years 
afterwards,  when  he  had  become  a  Catholic,  in  the  pages  of 
the  Apologia  he  told  what  he  meant  in  the  words  I  have  just 
quoted : 

*'  I  was  angry,"  he  says,  "with  the  Anglican  divines.  I  thought 
they  had  taken  me  in ;  I  had  read  the  Fathers  with  their  eyes ;  I  had 
sometimes  trusted  their  quotations  or  their  reasonings  ;  and  from 
reliance  on  them  I  had  used  words  or  made  statements,  which  prop- 
erly I  ought  rigidly  to  have  examined  myself.  I  had  exercised  more 
faith  than  criticism  in  the  matter.  ...  I  had  leaned  too  much  upon 
the  assertions  of  Ussher,  Jeremy  Taylor,  or  Barrow,  and  had  been 
deceived  hy  them." 

Now,  Cardinal  Newman  is  the  most  illustrious  Englishman 
to-day  living.  Even  the  Vicar  calls  him  "honest";  but  the 
Vicar  himself  has  used  against  the  Catholic  Church  in  this  dis- 
cussion, and  unprovoked  by  me,  the  harshest  words  the  lan- 
guage has.  Cardinal  Newman  did  the  same  thing,  but,  on 
learning  that  he  had  been  deceived  by  his  teachers,  he  honor- 
ably withdrew  them  and  as  publicly  as  he  had  uttered  them. 
The  Vicar  mtist  be  satisfied  and  convinced  from  my  reply  and 


360  Ii'SK,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

explanations,  that  ho  too  has  heen  deceived — ?n-"  credibly  in- 
formed.''' If  then,  like  Cardinal  Newman,  he  he  an  "honest" 
man  ho  will  follow  his  example — "  Go  and  do  likewise."  Let 
him  remember  "  the  j^reat  assize,"  "  the  burning  lake,"  and  the 
imhappy  lot  of  Bellarminc  and  Baronius. 

I  would  advise  the  Vicar  again :  1.  To  make  himself  ac- 
quainted with  the  first  principles  of  Catholic  Theology,  of 
which  he  has  shown  himself  profoundly  ignorant.  2.  To  de- 
vote the  next  five  years  to  getting  some  knowledge  of  Chris- 
tian antiquity,  and  meanwhile  refuse  to  be  "credibly  in- 
formed "  by  "  learned  friends,"  who  know  no  more  about  it 
than  himself.  This  will  save  him  from  a  renewal  of  the  dis- 
grace and  humiliation  brought  upon  him  by  his  ignorance  of 
the  application  of  Ii^sa  by  ecclesiastical  writers  before  the  12th 
century.  3.  Not  to  dream  of  understanding  the  full  meaning 
of  the  Fathers  he  may  read  during  this  probation,  unless  he  is 
determined  to  sympathize  most  fully  with  them.  Remember 
the  words  of  Cardinal  Newman  to  Pusey,  describing  his  feel- 
ings as  an  Anglican : 

"  I  recollect  well  what  an  outcast  I  seemed  to  myself,  when  I  took 
down  from  the  shelves  of  my  library  the  volumes  of  St.  Athanasms 
or  St.  Basil,  and  set  myself  to  study  them ;  and  how,  on  the  con- 
trary, when  at  length  I  was  brought  into  Catholic  communion  I 
kissed  them  with  delight,  with  a  feeling  that  in  them  I  liad  more 
than  all  that  I  had  lost ;  and,  as  though  I  were  directly  addressing 
the  glorious  saints,  who  bequeathed  them  to  the  chureh,  how  I  said 
to  the  inanimate  pages,  '  You  are  now  mine,  and  I  am  now  yours, 
beyond  any  mistake.'  ....  The  Fathers  made  me  a  Catholic, 
and  I  am  not  going  to  kick  down  the  ladder  by  which  I  ascended 
into  the  church.  It  is  a  ladder  quite  as  serviceable  for  that  purpose 
now  as  it  was  twenty  years  ago." 

4.  Not  to  be  guilty  of  the  disgusting  folly  and  impertinence 
of  crying  out  "  Forgery ! "  because  an  inconvenient  quotation 
is  made  from  a  writer  of  whom  he  knows  nothing,  and  of 
pressing  to  his  bosom  what  he  ought  to  know  to  be  a  forgery, 
only  because  it  is  "advantageous  to  our  Church."  And, 
finally,  that  he  be  quite  sure  that  the  arguments  he  uses  against 
Catholic  devotion  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  are  not  equally  valid 


A  Ke-ioinokr.  301 

against  what  he  himself  cuiisidcrs  the  fundamental  doctrines  of 
Christianity. 

And  now  a  parting  word  to  Hishop  Kingdon,  the  original 
offender.  AVhen  he  made  the  statement  that  Ij^f^a  was  a  "  mis- 
print "  for  Ipse,  did  he  know  that  at  the  very  moment  when  the 
Catholic  Church  promulgated  the  doctrine  of  the  Innnacuhite 
'  (Conception  she  was  holding  in  her  hand  the  Koinan  edition  of 
the  Septuagint,  the  peerless  Vatican  Codex,  i)rei)ared  as  an  aid 
to  the  revisors  of  the  authentic  Vulgate,  at  the  suggestion  of 
Cardinal  Perretti  (afterwards  tiie  great  Pope  Sixtus  V.),  and 
published  in  the  second  year  of  his  pontificate,  A.D.  1587? 
Did  he  know  that  this  king  of  MSS.  has  the  mascaline  read- 
ing, Autos — lie  f  An  edition  of  the  Vatican  Codex  by  Father 
Loch,  fresh  from  the  press,  and  dedicated  to  the  illustrious  Leo 
XIIL,  is  now  before  uie.  It  is  the  most  valuable  and  authori- 
tative Biblical  MS.  in  the  world.  "How  should  '■'' Pi'otest- 
anis,"  asks  Tregelles,  one  of  the  chief  among  recent  Protestant 
textual  critics — "  How  should  Protestants  have  been  willin<;  to 
concede  such  an  honor  to  this  text  which  had  appeared  under 
Papal  sanction  ?  It  gained  its  ground  and  kept  it  because  it 
was  really  an  ancient  text,  such  in  its  general  complexion  as 
was  read  by  the  early  Fathers  "  (Tregelles'  "  Account  of  the 
printed  Text  of  the  Greek  N.  T.,"  p.  185).  But  according  to 
Bishop  Kingdon  the  Catholic  Church  knew  nothing  about  the 
Vatican  Codex.  On  the  contrary,  in  1854  she  was  misled  by 
a  "  misprint "  in  the  Vicar's  "  corrupt  "  Vulgate  and  she,  the 
"  pillar  and  the  ground  of  truth,"  "  founded "  her  solemn 
teaching  about  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  ever  blessed 
Mother  of  God  upon  it !  New,  an  ordinarily  intelligent  mind 
would  conclude  from  the  knowledge  of  the  Church  and  her 
action  on  it,  that  she  recognized  no  doctrinal  difference  be- 
tween the  masculine  and  theyemi7mie  reading  in  Gen.  iii.  15, 
and  that  she  therefore  "  founded  "  nothing  upon  it.  Alas ! 
She  had  no  "  educated  English  gentlemen "  from  Oxford  at 
her  elbow,  to  teach  her  how  to  read  her  own  documents,  and 
to  warn  her  of  the  "tremendous  importance"  of  the  blunder 
she  was  making !  Verily,  the  sight  of  an  Anglican  Bishop  ut- 
tering such  words  as  I  have  been  considering,  confirms  what  a 


362  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

learned  Protestant  writer  says  of  the  theological  requirements 
for  the  office,  to  wit :  "  The  primary  qualification  for  the  An- 
glican Episcopate  is  ability  to  conjugate  correctly  the  Middle 
Voice  of  the  Greek  verb." 

Here  I  take  leave  of  my  opponents  for  the  present.  I  am 
in  doubt  whether  I  should  say  "  Good-by,"  or  simply  "  Au 
revoir  ";  I  therefore  address  them  in  Carlyle's  words :  "  Oh  ye 
hapless  two,  mutually  extinctive,  sleep  ye  well  in  the  Mother's 
bosom  that  bore  you  both." 

I  beg  to  add  only  a  few  more  words  of  a  personal  sort,  and 
then  make  an  end.  The  contest  has  been  an  unequal  one.  It 
is  true  we  are  both  "  busy  priests,"  but  from  the  nature  and 
necessities  of  my  daily  occupation,  my  "clerical"  duties  have 
been  more  exacting  than  those  of  my  opponent.  N^evertheless, 
I  have  met  him  single-handed  and  alone.  No  unmanly  ego- 
ism prompts  the  emphatic  declaration  that,  from  beginning  to 
end  of  this  controversy  I  not  only  7iever  asked  from  my  many 
"learned  friends"  even  one  question  touching  it,  but  what  is 
more,  I  never  received  even  one  suggestion  regarding  it,  directly 
or  indirectly,  from  any  quarter  outside  of  my  books.  Such  of 
these  as  I  did  not  have  in  iny  own  library,  I  got  either  from 
Rome,  Paris,  London,  New  York,  or  elsewhere.  I  make  this 
declaration  in  justice  to  the  main  subjects  discussed,  to  the  end 
that  responsibility  for  all  shortcomings  may  rest  entirely  with 
me.  I  might  well  indeed  have  sought  assistance,  and  received 
it  abundantly,  but — to  say  out  honestly  what  I  feel — I  thought 
it  a  treason  to  my  venerated  teachers — Fathers  Barry,  Varilly, 
Dixon,  Doucet,  and  Bannon,  and  to  His  Lordship  Bishop 
Rogers,  clarum  et  venerahile  nomen,  the  founder  of  my  own 
bumble  Alma  Mater,  St.  Michael's  College.  My  opponents 
were  too  small  to  justify  any  intellectual  fear  for  the  armor 
she  gave  me — and  their  eyes  were  upon  me.  Intellectual 
fear !  An  instructed  Catholic  knows  not  what  it  is.  Why 
should  he  fear  ?  The  truth  of  Catholicism  rests  on  historical 
arguments,  which  are  not  only  incontrovertible,  but  in  some 
sense  irresistible.  "  Tiie  proof  seems,"  to  Cardinal  Newman, 
"  such  as  even  to  master  and  carrj'  away  the  intellect  directly 
it  is  stated  ;  so  that  CathoUcism  is  almost  its  own  evidence." 


A  RwoiNDER.  3G3 

Why  should  he  fear  ?  He  is  tlie  heir  to  the  wealth, — moral, 
Bpiritual,  scriptural,  philosophical,  historical — of  nineteen  cent- 
uries of  Christian  thought  created  by  the  Church  whose  intel- 
lectual life  he  lives.  The  atmosj^here  in  Avhich  he  dwells 
vibrates  with  logical  thunderbolts,  and  he  has  but  to  put  forth  his 
hand  and  seize  them  as  they  go  whizzing  by.  What  business 
has  an  Anglo-Ritualist  with  one  so  equipped  ?  This  Rejoinder 
will  explain. 

Again,  I  wish  to  disarm  those  of  your  readers  who  try  to 
divert  others  from  the  real  points  at  issue  in  this  discussion  by 
accusations  against  me  of  bitterness,  causticity,  and  the  like. 
I  would  remind  them  that  a  burglar  has  no  difficulty  in  keep- 
ing his  temper  ;  but  that  when  the  ov/ner  of  the  house,  on 
rising,  finds  himself  to  have  sustained  grievous  loss,  he  de- 
serves no  small  praise  if  he  bear  that  loss  with  perfect  patience. 
So  when  an  assault  is  made  on  the  object  of  a  man's  dearest 
attachment — the  Catholic  Church  with  all  that  it  implies — he 
is  of  course  tempted  to  anger  and  excitement.  A  man  is  not 
expected  to  argue  unmoved  with  the  unjust  assailant  of  the 
fair  fame  of  his  mother,  his  wife,  or  his  sister.  In  this  case 
the  l)urglar  was  caught  in  the  act,  but  straightaway  lost  his 
temper  and  proceeded  to  insult  where  he  had  tried  to  injure, 
pleading  zeal  for  trutli  in  justification.  I  claim  the  privilege 
of  the  same  plea,  and  neither  accuse  nor  excuse  myself  for  the 
language  in  which  I  have  tried  to  project  on  the  burglar's 
attention  my  contempt  for  his  clumsy  attempt.  liij,  eons  in- 
dignation is  one  thing;  malice,  hatred,  bigotry,  a;>d  pujudice 
quite  other  things.  These,  indeed,  argue  an  uncleanness  in 
which  I  will  have  no  part.  They  are  to  me  as  loathsome  as  an 
impure  thought  deliberately  entertained,  and  with  them,  as  a 
Catholic,  I  can  have  no  fellowship.  Will  ingenuous  Protest- 
ants please  lay  this  to  heart  ? 

And  now  I  have  done.     To  you,  Mr.  Editor,  I  beg  to  renew 

the  expression  of  my  warmest  gratitude  for  your  boundless 

courtesy  and  tireless  patience  during  the  execution  of  my 

task. 

Ever  gratefully  yours, 

R.    F.    QuiOLEY. 


3Ci  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

My  opponent  replied  to  the  above  liejoinder  in  a  series  of 
twenty-three  letters.  On  tlieir  conclusion,  the  Editor  of  the 
Gloije  declared  the  only  conditions  on  which  the  discussion 
could  be  continued  in  its  columns.  I  was  to  have  one  column, 
my  opponent  the  same  space  afterwards,  and  then  a  half-col- 
umn was  to  be  allowed  me  to  close.  Now,  so  far  as  the  Globe 
was  concerned,  no  reasonable  man  could  complain  of  these 
terms.  We  had  been  treated  in  the  most  generous  and  court- 
eous way,  and  I  doubt  if  ever  before  so  prolonged  a  discussion 
on  such  serious  themes  of  theological  controversy  was  permitted 
in  newspaper  columns.  Nevertheless,  so  far  as  the  matters  in 
debate  were  concerned,  the  limits  within  which  the  Globe 
proposed  that  I  should  compress  my  review,  were  wholly  in- 
adequate to  the  demands  made  upon  me  by  my  opponent's 
mode  of  handling  our  subjects.  Having  put  my  hand  to  the 
plough,  I  must  needs  go  from  headland  to  headland.  There- 
fore I  did  not  accept  the  Globe's  terms.  Instead,  I  have  pre- 
pared for  publication  in  this  volume  the  following  Hehutter, — 
a  full,  fearless,  and  conscientiously  faithful  consideration  of 
every  attempt  at  counter-argument  made  to  the  Rejoinder. 
For  the  sake  of  uniformity,  I  have  preserved  the  epistolary 
style,  and  addressed  myself  to  the  Editor  and  the  readers  oi' 
the  Globe.     I  have  little  doubt  about  the  verdict. 


IPSE,  IPSA,  IPSUM-A  KEBUTTER. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir, — The  Vicar  recently  finished  in  your  columns  a  second 
series  of  his  Strictures,  in  twenty-three  letters.  By  my  Jie- 
joinder  to  his^;'*^  series,  I  have  made  his  name  a  watchword 
of  infamy  amongst  all  honest,  truth-loving  men— forever.  But 
no  one  who  has  not  read  the  second  series  can  have  any  con- 
ce^/tion  of  the  terms — malignity  and  meanness,  platitude  and 
perversity,  decrepitude  of  cankered  intelligence,  and  despera- 
tion of  humiliated  vanity.  Here  we  have  the  llitualist  pseudo- 
"  priest,"  the  "  Old  Catholic "  as  he  styles  himself,  in  full 
bloom.  I  propose,  how^ever,  to  look  at  them  seriatim,  and  to 
give  your  readers  a  faithful  account  of  thel  contents.  I  will  be 
as  brief  as  possible. 

First  Lettkr. — This  is  but  a  lachrymose  jeremiad.  Like  a 
whipped  school-boy  he  appeals  to  your  readers  for  sympathy, 
and  complains  that  some  frolicsome  young  maidens  so  "de- 
meaned themselves"  as  to  laugh  at  him.  Well,  I  suppose 
their  plea  would  be  that  of  the  old  Greek,  St.  Gregory  Nazi- 
anzen :  "  Give  us  leave  to  he  tnen'y  on  a  merry  sultjectP 
That  the  Vicar  has  now  become  such  in  ibis  community — who 
doubts  ? 

Second  Letter. — To  divert  public  attention  from  the  over- 
whelming force  of  my  Rejoinder  on  the  main  question,  he  de- 
votes this  letter  to  the  (piestion  of  the  authenticity  of  the  well- 
known  seventh  verse  of  the  fifth  chapter  of  1  tlohn — "And 
there  are  three  that  give  testimony  in  heaven,  the  Father,  the 
Word,  and  the  Holy  Ghost :  and  these  three  are  one."  This 
he  calls  "the  celebrated  interpolation,"  says  it  is  "omitted 

now  of  course  in  the  lievised  Version  "  of  the  Bible,  and  he 

(305) 


366  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

winds  up  with  the  magisterial  declaration :  "  I  surrender  (!)  the 
interpolation  concerning  the  Three  Heavenly  Witnesses  which 
the  scholarly  revisors  of  the  English  New  Testament  have 
abandoned." 

Now,  is  not  such  language  in  the  mouth  of  an  Anglo-Ritual- 
ist simply  disgusting?  Why,  to-day  the  Revised  Version  is  of 
no  more  authority  in  the  Anglican  Church  than  an  old  alma- 
nac. No  Anglican  minister  (in  England  at  least)  can  lawfully 
use  it  in  public  worship.  Parliament,  or  the  Privy  Council  rep- 
resenting the  Crown,  must  first  appoint  or  allow  it  to  be  read, 
as  is  the  case  with  the  King  James  Version.  This  was  proved 
a  little  while  ago.  At  a  meeting  of  the  London  Diocesan 
Conference  a  proposal  was  made  to  petition  Convocation  to 
consider  the  advisability  of  permitting  the  use  in  public  wor- 
ship of  the  Revised  Version.  The  proposal  was  rejected,  and 
during  the  debate  Dr.  Wace  called  attention  to  the  censures 
on  the  Revision  of  Dr.  Scrivener,  Dean  Burgon,  and  Canon 
Cook ;  and  he  himself  protested  in  particular  against  the  doubt 
thrown  by  the  Revisors  on  the  close  of  St.  Mark^s  Gospel  and 
against  the  rendering,  "Deliver  us  from  the  evil  one,"  in  the 
Lord's  Prayer.  Then  one  minister  avowed  that  he  had  adopted 
the  Revision  in  his  week-day  services;  whereupon  Bishop 
Temple  interrupted  him  with  the  remark  that  this  was  illegal, 
tliough  personally  he  would  neither  prosecute  nor  allow  him 
to  1)6  prosecuted  for  so  doing. 

But  what  is  the  Revised  Version  ?  It  is  the  work  of  Angli- 
can Bishops,  sitting  with  Methodists,  Baptists,  Presbyterians, 
and  Unitarians — that  is,  the  English  Bible  improved  according 
to  modern  ideas  of  progressive  Biblical  Criticism !  And  who 
gave  these  men  authority  over  the  written  Word  of  God  ?  It 
was  not  Parliament,  or  the  Privy  Council,  but  the  Church  of 
England  acting  through  Convocation !  Who  gave  Convocation 
the  autiiority  ?     Nobody. 

IIow  are  we  to  know  what  is  the  genuine  written  Word  of 
God  ?  Tlie  Vicar  can  give  no  intelligible  answer,  because  he 
has  no  conception  of  the  character  and  office  of  the  Church  of 
God.  The  Catholic  at  once  gives  an  answer  in  the  words  of 
St.  Augustine :  "  I  should  not  believe  the  Gospel  were  I  npt 


A  Kebuitek.  367 

moved  tliereto  by  the  autliority  of  the  Catholic  Church."  So 
must  it  be  with  every  man  who  looks  the  question  fairly  in  the 
face.  The  Bible  is  the  creation  of  the  Church  ;  and  to  accept 
it,  in  any  true  8ense,*as  the  Word  of  God,  logically  involves  a 
belief  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Church.  External  authority  is 
the  only  voucher  for  canonicity.  It  was  for  the  Church  here, 
as  in  doctrinal  controversies,  to  judge  of  conflicting  traditions 
and  diverging  opinions,  and  in  the  fullness  of  time  to  give  her 
sentence.  And,  in  fact,  so  she  judged,  and  judged  infallibly, 
or  her  judgment  is  vain.  The  Vicar,  who  hypocritically  boasts 
of  the  "  Bible-only  "  principle  (thereby  flatly  contradicting  his 
own  school),  prefers  the  opinion  of  the  Quaker  critic,  Tre- 
gelles,  to  the  authority  of  the  Church  of  God.  "Well,  that  is 
consistent  enough.  In  the  first  days  of  Protestantism  private 
judgment  fixed  what  the  Scr'i])tnrG  meant ;  now  textual  crit- 
icism settles  for  the  Vicar  what  Scripture  says,'  and  shortly 
"  higher  criticism "  will  reject  text  and  meaning  alike.  In 
Germany  such  criticism  has  put  the  Bible  in  the  nuiseum, — 
England  will  soon  follow  suit.  But  one  thing  is  certain.^  that, 
as  in  the  centuries  before  the  birth  of  Protestantism,  so  after 
it  is  dead  and  gone,  the  Catholic  Church  will  continne  to  read 
in  her  Bible  and  profess  in  her  creed  that  ''  there  are  Three 
who  give  testimony  in  Heaven,  and  these  Three  are  one  •' — 
the  Vicar's  Quaker  critic  and  "  scholarly  revisors  "  to  the  con- 
trary not^vithstanding. 

On  leaving  this  irrelevant  topic,  I  would  call  the  attention  of 
your  learned  readers  to  a  very  recent  discussion,  jt>?'0  and  co7i, 
between  Catholic  theologians.  I  refer  to  the  articles  by  the  Abbe 
Martin  (recently  deceased),  the  Abbe  Rambouillet,  and  Canon 
Maunoury,  in  the  lievue  des  Sciences  Jteolesiastiques,  Aout  et 
Septembre,  1887;  Septembre,  1888;  Mars,  Avril,  et  Mai, 
1889  (now  before  me);  and  to  the  Dublin  Review,  January, 
1890,  p.  182. 

TniuD  Letter. — I  beg  the  serious  attention  of  your  readers 
to  my  connnents  on  this  letter.  I  have  convicted  hijn  of  so 
many  impudent  falsehoods  tliat  I  am  loath  to  follow  him 
further.     But  he  has  now  so  surpassed  himself  in  shameless. 


368  Ip8e,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

iinblusliing,  and  deliberate  mendacity  that  I  cannot  pass  it  by. 
Here  "  Iniquity  hath  lied  to  itself,"  and  I  have  alleged  it  to  be 
deliberate.     Let  me  probe  it. 

He  says :  * 

"Let  us  now  consider  ....  whether  or  not  my  opponent  has 
yet  accomplished  the  penance  I  set  him  for  his  impertinence  to 
Bishop  Kingdon. 

"It  will  be  remembered  that  I  set  him  to  name  a  manuscript  of 
the  Latin  Vulgate,  either  uncial  or  cursive,  which  reads  Ipsu7n 
instead  of  Ipse  or  Ipsa  in  Gen.  iii.  15." 

When  he  wrote  this  last  paragraph,  had  he  become  too  petri- 
fied for  any  moral  struggle  'i  lu  pity  let  us  believe  it.  Doubt- 
less his  purpose,  but  took  on  the  shape  of  Macbeth's  thoughts 
when  contemplating  Duncan's  murder : 

Slai-s,  hide  your  fires ! 
Let  not  light  see  my  black  and  deep  desires ! 
The  eye  wink  at  the  hand !    Yet  let  that  be 
Which  the  eye  fears  when  it  is  done  to  see. 

He  asserts  that  he  set  me,  as  a  penance,  "  to  name  a  manu- 
script of  the  Latin  Vulgate"  which  has  Ipsum.  Most  wicked 
and  deliberate  falsehood !  He  never  mentioned  "  a  manuscript 
of  the  Latin  Vulgate  "  from  first  to  last.  Here  I  am  irresist- 
ibly reminded  of  these  'crushing  words  of  Inspiration  :  "  Out 
of  thy  own  mouth  I  judge  thee,  thou  wicked  servant";  and,  let 
me  add  the  sentence,  from  the  same  source,  in  words  equally 
fitting :  "  The  feet  of  those  who  shall  bury  thee  are  at  the 
door."    Now  to  the  proof. 

In  his  very  first  letter  in  this  controversy  (the  third  pre- 
liminary letter  in  this  volume),  he  wrote  as  follows : 

(Mr.  Quigley)  "asks  somewliat  indignantly  why  Bishop  Kingdon, 
in  his  lecture,  did  not  put  the  real  state  of  the  question  before  his 
hearers,  and  tell  them  the  dispute  was  not  between  Ipse  and  Ipsa, 
hut  also  between  Ipsum.  Where,  then,  is  to  be  fpund  a  Latin 
Versio7i  of  the  Bible  with  Ipsum  in  this  passagef — (Gen.  lii.  16). 
I  have  never  seen  it  in  my  commentary." 

Again,  in  the  eighth  preliminary  letter,  when  declining  my 
challenge,  he  says : 


A  Rebuttkk.  3G9 

"The  matter  is  very  simple.  Mr.  Quigley  has  iniinigued  Bisliop 
Kingdon's  scholarship,  and  has  empliasized,  iu  the  title  of  lu.s 
lettere  (not  Ipse,  Ipsa,  but  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum),  what  he  con-sidere 

an  important  emendation I  have,  tlierefore,  asked  him  in 

the  firet  place  to  mention  some  of  those  standard  Latin  Versions  of 
the  Bible  (mark  you!)  he  accused  the  Bishop  of  overlooking." 

And  again,  in  tlie  first  letter  of  liis  first  series  of  StrictureSy 
he  wrote : 

"My  challenge,  therefore,  to  my  opponent  to  name  even  one  old 
Latin  Version  of  the  Bible  (mark  you!)  containing  Ipsum  i)i  Gen. 
iii.  15,  was  made  simply  to  punish  him  for  impugning  the  Bishop's 
scholarship  and  honesty." 

Once  more,  in  the  second  letter  of  the  same  series,  he  un- 
dertakes to  examine : 

' '  Whether  my  opponent  has  properly  performed  the  penance  I 
set  him  for  his  impertinence  to  Bishop  Kingdon,  tliat  is  to  say, 
has  he  really  adduced  any  Latin  Version  of  the  Old  Testament 
(mark  you!)  of  any  critical  value  whatever  in  the  eyes  of  Biblical 
scholars,  to  justify  his  assertion  that  Bishop  Kingdon  suppressed  the 
truth  when  he  omitted  to  mention  Ipsum  as  a  various  reading  iu 
Gen.  iii.  15." 

Again,  in  the  same  letter  he  asks  me 

"  To  name  a  Latin  Version  (mark  you  I)  either  among  the  uncials 
or  cui-sives  which  contains  the  word  Ipsum  in  Gen.  iii.  15." — 

and  he  winds  up  by  again  proclaiming  his  ignorance  iu  these 
words : 

"In  all  the  commentaries  I  have  read  on  Gen.  iii.  15,  I  have 
never  found  Ipsum  mentioned  as  a  various  reading  (mark  you!) 
and  that,  therefore,  I  doubt  if  one  exists." 

These  quotations  give  an  absolutely  correct  and  exhaustive 
account  of  his  utterances  on  Ipsum.  Where  can  your  readers 
find  a  demand  upon  me  "  to  name  a  manuscript  of  the  Latin 
Vulgate  "  ?  And  yet  he  has  the  audficious  effrontery  to  say 
that  "/«!  will  he  remeinherciV  he  had  set  mc  that  task  as  a 
"  penance  "  !  What  shameless,  deliberate  mendacity  !  Truth 
and  honesty  have  no  claims  upon  him — he  murders  them  in 


370  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsfm. 

cold  blood.  Does  it  abate  the  moral  horror  that  must  thrill 
your  readers  to  parallel  him  with  Macbeth  when  bracing  him- 
self for  his  great  crime  ? 

....  Why  do  I  yield  to  that  sug'gestion 
Wliose  horrid  image  doth  unfix  my  liau'. 
And  make  my  seated  heart  knock  at  my  ribs 
Against  the  use  of  nature  ?    Present  feai-s 
Are  less  than  horrible  imaginings : 
My  thought,  whose  murder  yet  is  but  fantastical, 
Shakes  so  lay  single  state  of  man,  that  function 
Is  smothered  in  surmise;  and  nothing  is 
But  what  is  not. 

"And  nothing  is  but  what  is  not."  Ilow  happily  these 
words  express  the  essence  of  the  Vicar's  babblings  in  the  letter 
I  am  now  revicwiTig !  He  asserts  the  thing  th^t  is  not,  and 
then  proceeds  to  build  his  "  castles  in  the  air." 

Now,  your  re^iders  will  remember  that  the  first  l)ranch  of 
my  position  against  Bishop  Kingdon  was,  that  the  reading  in 
Gen.  iii.  15  was  various,  that  is  to  say,  not  J/)se,  Ij)sa  simply, 
but  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsxmi.  Tlie  Vicar,  as  ippears  by  the  quota- 
tion made  shortly  ago,  denied  the  existence  of  Ipsum,  declared 
he  had  never  seen  it  mentioned  as  a  various  reading,  and 
challtMiged  me  to  produce  "  any  Latin.  Version  of  the  Bihle  " 
having  it.  A  reference  to  the  fourth  letter  of  my  Rejoinder 
will  show  that  I  gave  him  SIX  FxiMOUS  LATIN  BIBLES, 
with  a  host  of  other  great  authorities.  Thereupon,  stupefied 
by  his  humiliated  vanity,  he  blurts  out  the  insolent  untruth 
that  he  had  asked  me  for  "  a  manuscript  of  the  Latin  Vulgate." 

Who  ever  claimed  that  Ipsum,  was  found  in  the  Latin 
Vulgate  ?  Why,  Ipsa  is  the  great  sin  of  that  Version  in  the 
Vicar's  eyes,  and  I  put  it  forward  as  the  anthority,^;«r  excel- 
lence, for  that  one  of  the  various  readings  which  I  had  to  prove. 
For  the  other  two,  Ipse,  Tpsiim,  I  adduced  names  and  books 
from  every  qi;arter,  and  I  think  I  have  satisfied  your  readers 
on  that  score.  In  a  postscript  to  the  fourth  letter  of  ray  7?^- 
joinder  will  be  found  additional  evidence  for  Ipsum,  which 
will  allay  the  Vicar's  thirst  for  ^'Uncials"  and  "Cursives." 

In  the  same  letter  I  have  charged  against  the  Vicar  the  das- 


A    liEBUTTEK. 


371 


tardly  crime  of  literary  forgery — that  is,  garbling  a  quotation 
from  De  Kossi,  which  he  gave  in  the  ninth  preliminary  letter 
in  this  volume.  Every  one,  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike,  to 
whom  I  showed  the  books,  confessed  it  was  an  infamous  trick, 
lie  copied  from  Do  Rossi  right  up  to  the  word  Jpsiivt,  wilfully 
and  wickedly  suppressed  it,  interpolated  words  not  in  De 
Rossi's  text  at  all,  and  then  solemnly  declared  that : 

"In  all  the  comnientai'les  I  have  read  on  Gen.  iii.  15,  I  have  never 
found  Ipsiim  mentioned  as  a  vai'ious  reading,  and  that  therefore  I 
doubt  if  one  exists." 

In  his  letter,  now  under  review,  he  admits  the  commission 
of  the  f(M*gery  in  these  words  : 

"  I  allow  that  I  purposely  ouutted  mention  of  Ipsuvi  in  my  sum- 
mary of  De  Rossi,  because  bad  I  introduced  it  without  a  long  ex- 
phuiation  (such  as  now  given),  after  the  utter  rubbish  v.ritten  about 
Ipsum  by  my  opponent,  I  sbould  only  have  seconded  his  efforts 
to  confuse  the  public  mind,  and  I  wanted  to  be  spared  the  unneces- 
sai-y  and  useless  trouble  of  givhig  it." 

What  a  confession!  But  the  "damned  spot"  will  not  so 
"  out."    Examine  it  as  paralleled : 


De  Rossi's  icords. 
"Which  original  authorities 
and  witnesses  being  most  exceed- 
ingly grave  and  insurmoxmtable, 
evidently  demonstrate  that  the 
true  reading  of  the  sacred  text  is 
Hu,  Ipse,  Ipsum.'" 


The  Vicar'' s  forgery. 
"He  (De  Rossi)  enumerates 
thirty -five  'most  exceedingly 
and  insurmountable  original 
autborities  and  witnesses '  in 
support  of  tlie  masculine  'He 
shall  bruise  the  serpent's  head.' " 


Why  suppress  Ipsum,  interpolate  the  Scripture  text,  "Z?i? 
shall  bruise  the  serpent's  head,"  and  then  avow  to  his  readers 
that — '•  I  have  never  found  Ipsum  mentioned  as  a  various 
reading"?  What  explanation  was  needed?  Moreover,  when 
the  Yicar  volunteered  the  evidence  of  De  Rossi,  I  had  not  dis- 
cussed Ipsum  beyond  my  statement  of  fact  in  my  first  letter 
to  the  Bishop,  and  the  Yicar  himself  had  concluded  that  "  the 
controversy  had  closed."  "  I  wanted  to  be  spared  the  un- 
necessary and  useless  trouble  of  giving  it,"  he  says,     "^'ly. 


372  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

there's  the  rxibP  The  hypocritical  stickler  for  lionesty  row 
confesses  that  he  considers  it  to  be  "unnecessary  and  useless" 
to  abstain  from  literary  forgeries — and  therefore  any  other 
crime — if  these  can  in  any  way  l)e  made  "advaTitageous  to  our 
Church."  This  candid  avowal  explains  his  course  in  this  dis- 
cussion. The  principle  is  borrowed  from  his  master,  Little- 
dale,  whose  whole  career  was  shaped  and  directed  by  it.  The 
disciple  is  worthy  of  the  master  in  blatant  dishonesty,  though 
not  in  ability.  May  the  occasion  of  the  awful  judgment  of 
Holy  Writ  strike  terror  into  his  heart  while  he  is  still  young : 
"  The  feet  of  those  who  shall  bury  thee  are  at  the  door." 

I  will  now  consider  the  Vicar's  attempt  at  humor.  lie 
pretends  to  believe  that  I  did  not  know  there  were  but  two 
genders  in  Hebrew,  because  I  so  effectively  exposed  his  dis- 
honest garbling  of  De  Eossi.  I  have  already  discussed  the 
matter  in  the  last  letter  of  my  Rejoinder.  V>\\i  I  Avill  offer 
here  my  account  of  the  language  in  the  fourth  letter  of  the 
Rejoinder,  which  he  criticizes. 

I  despaired  of  making  plain  to  the  non-classical  reader  the 
Vicar's  heinous  forgery  of  De  Rossi  mentioned  above.  I  set 
about  it,  however,  in  these  words : 

"Here  let  me  clear  the  way  for  a  full  undei-standuig of  the  posi 
tioii  by  the  orclniary  reader.  In  Hebrew  the  words  corresponding" 
to  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsumare  Hu,  Hi,  Hu,  to  speak  popularly,  since  I  can- 
not reproduce  here  the  Hebrew  charactere.  It  will  be  noticed  that 
in  Hebi-ew  the  masculine  and  neuter  genders  are  tlie  same,  so  that 
an  authority  for  one  is  at  the  same  time  an  authority  for  the 
other." 

Now,  in  adopting  this  mode  of  speech  my  sole  desire  was  to 
aid  the  ordinary  reader  in  comprehending  the  matter  in  dis- 
pute I  therefore  paralleled  the  Hebrew — IIu,  Hi,  Ilti,  with 
the  Latin  fjm',  Ipsa,  Tpsvm ;  that  is  to  say,  I  made  use  of 
physical  signs  v^i\\QV  than  strict  grammatical  forms,  ior  the 
purpose  of  impressing  the  idea  more  sharply  on  the  mind  of 
the  general  reader,  llu,  as  a  sign,  is  represented  in  Latin  by 
Ipse,  Ipsum,  and  Hi,  also  as  a  sign,  is  represented  in  Latin  by 
Ipsa — at  least  in  the  matter  and  connection  under  discussion 
in  this  controversy.     Had  I  pointed  out  that  Hi  sometimes 


A  Rebutter.  373 

represented  tlie  neuter  gender  (viz.,  when  it  refers  to  inani- 
mate ohjects),  I  would  have  only  blurred  the  clear  impression 
which  the  parallelism  I  had  made  was  well  calculated  to  give. 
No  such  explanation  was  necessary  here,  because  we  were  not 
discussing  "  inaninuite  objects,"  but  no  less  a  ^>e/'.w/i  than  the 
Inniiaculate  Mother  of  God.  Therefore  I  coniiiicd  ///  to  the 
expression  of  the  feminine  gender.  For  this  reason,  I  submit 
to  your  learned  readers  that  my  parallel  is  not  only  legitinuite, 
but  well  conceived  in  this  connection.  Indeed,  it  was  sug- 
gested to  me  by  all  the  Latin  counuentators  on  our  text.  For 
instance,  many  of  them  say  that  the  Hebrew  MSS.  have 
Ipsum,  while  others  say  they  have  Ipse, — IIu,  the  Hebrew 
sign,  being  the  e(piivalent  for  both.  This  explains,  very 
clearly,  what  I  meant  when  I  said  that  an  authority,  in  Hebrew, 
for  the  masculine  Jj^se,  is  at  the  same  time  an  authority  for  the 
neuter,  Ipsum.  De  Rossi  supports  and  confirms  my  whole 
position  here,  for  he  says:  "The  true  reading  of  the  sacred 
text  is  JLu,  Ipse,  Ipsum :  and  countless  Catholic  authors,  both 
before  and  since  the  Council  of  Trent,  follow  this  reading  as  the 
truer,  and  prefer  it  to  the  feminine  ";  that  is,  prefer  it  to  III 
--Ipsa.  Your  readers  will  instantly  remark  that  De  Rossi 
adopts  absolutely  my  parallel,  JIu,  Hi,  llu — Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ip- 
sum /  and  he  does  not  confuse  his  readers  by  reminding  them 
that  "  inaninuite  objects,"  of  which  he  was  not  speaking,  are 
sometimes  masculine,  and  sometimes  feminine  in  Hebrew.  I 
very  much  fear  the  poor  Yicar  will  never  recover  his  mental 
equilibrium.  That  *'six  weeks"  study  of  the  Fathers  has 
proved  too  much  for  him. 

Here  I  close  my  comments  on  his  third  letter.  Your  read- 
ers will  not  now  be  deceived  by  the  shameless  falsehood,  repeated 
over  and  over  again,  that  he  had  set  me  to  name  "a  manuscript 
of  the  Latin  Yulgate  which  reads  Ipsum.''^ 

Fourth  Letter. — Beyond  the  untruth  just  now  exposed, 
and  which  "  like  a  wounded  snake,  drags  its  slow  length  along," 
this  contains  nothing  worthy  of  remark.  He  simply  repeats 
from  his  first  series  of  Strictwes  what  I  have  fully  answered 
in  my  liejoinder.     There  is,  however,  an  insult  to  myself 


37-i  Ipse,  Ipsa,  IpdUM. 

against  which  I  must  protest.  He  represents  me  speaking 
of  him  as — "  Father ! "  O,  No !  God  forbid  that  I  should  so  dis- 
honor a  title  consecrated  by  respect  and  affection  to  the  Cath- 
olic Priesthood.  It  is  a  piece  of  wanton  insolence  to  put  it 
into  my  mouth  as  applied  to  him. 

Fifth  Letter. — If  it  be  true  that  "  all  a  man's  experience 
h  funded  in  him,"  the  Vicar  is  to  be  envied.  He  has  prated 
ad  nauseam  about  "  forgeries,"  "  verifications  "  of  authorities, 
and  my  "  Seminary  text-books."  We  have  long  since  learned 
how  ridiculous  were  his  pretensions  in  this  particular.  But  I 
propose  now  to  expose  anothor  infamous  trick,  as  bad  if  not 
worse  than  any  we  have  had  from  "  the  cap  and  bells." 

He  returns,  in  this  letter,  to  the  discussion  of  Ipsa.  Early 
in  this  controversy,  with  characteristically  vulgar  insolence,  he 
charged  that  I  had  the  help  of  "  learned  friends."  Now  he 
declares  the  source  from  which  he  has  drawn  his  information. 
It  is  from  the  office  of  the  London  Church  Times, — LittL-*"" 
dale's  workshop.  "  The  Church  Times^''  he  says,  *'  cour- 
teously allowed  one  of  the  students  on  its  staff  to  make  refer- 
ences for  me  to  these  works."  I  have  no  doubt  this  "  student " 
was  Littledale — the  "grinning  Voltaire"  of  the  Ritualistic 
party.  One  of  the  "works"  reported  by  the  "student;" — ^ 
"the  scholar  who  made  the  references  for  me,"  snys  r'lo*^' 'c?.r, 
— was  the  "famous  work"  of  Father  Vercellone  on  tl>p  "  V?.'-- 
ions  Readings  of  the  Latin  Vulgate  Bible/'  ir»  two  folio  vol- 
umes. Rome,  1860.  I  got  it  since  writing  my  Rejoinder,  and 
it  is  iiow  before  me.  Now  wutcu  tiie  trick  of  the  "  scholar  " 
anu  his  dupe  and  accomplice,  tho  pseudo-"  Priest  of  the  Mis- 
sion Church." 

Vercellone — "  the  eminent  Roman  Catholic  scholar,"  as  the 
Vicar  truly  calls  his  new-found  aide — is  commenting  (Vol.  1, 
p.  11),  on  Gen.  iii.  15.  lie  refers  to  the  essays  of  De  Rossi 
and  Cardinal  Patrizi,  which  I  have  so  fully  reported  to  your 
readers.     He  then  says  (I  translate) : 

"  Fi-om  which  it  appears  to  be  established  (videtur  oonstare),  that 
at  fii-st  tlie  present  reading  of  tl\e  Vulgate  ai-ose  from  carelessness  of 
the  copyists,  and  was  then  preserved  by  the  Roman  revisora  of  the 


A  Rebcttee.  875 

text  because  it  had  secured  for  itself  a  kind  of  prescriptive  right 
from  the  usage  of  many  centuries  among  the  Latms  in  nearly  all 
the  MSS. :  so  that  it  was  evidently  afar  greater  inconvenience  to 
change  it  than  to  leave  it  untouched.''^ 

In  these  words  Yercellone  simply  sums  up  the  opinions  of  De 
Rossi  and  Patrizi.  But  surely  there  is  nothing  new  here. 
Was  not  the  learned  Cardinal  one  of  my  own  witnesses  against 
Ipsa,  and  in  support  of  Ipse,  Ipsum  f  And  did  I  not  impale 
the  Vicar  for  his  wickedness  (now  confessed !)  in  6U]>pre66ing 
Ipsum  from  De  Rossi's  text  ? 

The  Vicar  gives  the  first  clause  in  the  above  quotation  from 
Yercellone;  but  who  suppressed  the  second  clause  which  I 
have  italicized?  Was  it  the  "scholar"  of  the  Church  Times 
on  his  unprincipled  henchman  here  ?  If  it  was  Littledale,  then 
the  disciple  is  so  worthy  of  the  master  that  they  can  divide 
the  fflory  of  the  infamy  between  them ;  but  if  it  was  the 
.  Tr: ^^  Mnf'V'  '1%  "ilia Lci  '. :'  •  ■.  rXlK- *c JD'ce  in  being  "  beaten  by 
the  boy  "  at  his  own  game.'  "*  ^'*^   • 

But  why  did  they  suppress  the  last  clause  ?  "  Ay,  there's 
the  rub."  It  was  to  help  Bishop  Kingdon  in  his  preposterous, 
disgraceful,  and  dishonoring  statement — which  he  has  not  yet 
retracted  and  apologized  for — that  the  Immaculate  Conception 
was  founded  on  Ipsa.  What  satanic  persistence  in  calumny ! 
"Evil  i  be  tVioi;  :r4i.g=>-ii/i"  .is  ?viil;;.^!tlY  their  motto  in  regard 
to  the  Catholic  Cirarch.  !Novv  ir^ark,  my  rpsdora,  Inljiy  very 
first  letter  I  said : 

"The  simple  truth  is  that  (Bishop  Kingdon's)  theory  of  amis- 
print  and  his  statement  there  anent  is  sheer  nonsense.  There  is 
absolutely  no  difiFerence  in  sense,  to  the  Catholic  mind  at  least,  bo 

tween  the  three  readings  (Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum) It  becomes  a 

mere  quillet  of  verbal  criticism I,  as  a  Catholic,  have  no 

more  interest  in  retaining  "Ipsa,"  "She"  in  the  text  than  he  has 
so  far  as  the  Immaculate  Conception  is  concerned." 

This  is  the  language  alike  of  the  great  Catholic  scholars  who 
adopt  Ipse,  Ipsum,  on  critical  grounds,  as  of  those  who  plead 
for  Ipsa  on  the  same  grounds.  In  proof  of  this  I  have  given 
some  of  the  most  profound  theologians  in  the  Church, — not 
one  of  whom  has  been,  or  can  he,  offset  hy  contrary  teaching. 


376  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

And  all  this  is  now  absolutely  confirmed  by  the  evidence  of 
the  learned  Vercellone,  a  witness  "  courteously  "  called  to  the 
Vicar's  assistance  by  the  "scholar"  of  the  Church  Times. 
What  a  cruel  Nemesis !  What  a  crushing  humiliation  to  Bishop 
Kingdon  1  The  Vicar  says  that  Vercellone  is  "  an  eminent 
Roman  Catholic  scholar."  Precisely.  He  ought  therefore  to 
be  accepted  by  Protestants  as  a  better  authority  on  Catholic 
doctrine  than  Bishop  Kingdon  ?  Most  assuredly.  Well,  then, 
Vercellone  says  that,  assuming  the  critical  aspect  of  the  matter 
to  be  as  stjited  by  De  Lossi  and  Patrizi,  still  from  its  great  an- 
tiquity and  almost  universal  use  in  the  Western  Church,  it 
would  cause  greater  INCONVENIENCE  if  Ipsa  were  changed 
to  Tpse  or  Ipsum  than  if  it  were  left  untouched.  Simply 
"  inconvenient,^^  mark  you.  Is  this  the  language  of  a  Catholic 
Theologian  when  he  is  discussing  a  question  in  whi"h  Christian 
doctrine  is  involved  ?  O,  no ;  but  it  is  the  reason  why  the 
Vicar  found  it  convenient  to  suppress  this  part  of  the  quotation 
from  Vercellone,  that  is,  if  the  second-hand  "  reference "  of 
his  "scholar"  contained  it.  Of  course,  "you  know,"  honesty 
is  quite  "  unnecessary  and  useless  "  in  dealing  with  a  "  Roman 
controversialist."  It  is  "  beneath  the  dignity  of  a  gentleman 
to  cross  swords"  in  honorahU  warfare  with  "such  an  adver- 
sary ";  and  then,  "you  know,"  if  he  happens  to  be  one  of  the 
"  poor  Irish,"  one  stands  in  grave  danger  of  heanng  from  the 
"Shillalah,"  "you  know." 

But  more.  Vercellone  proceeds  to  discuss  the  whole  ques- 
ti(m,  and  he  gives  the  authorities  for  Ipisc,  Ipsa,  Ipsum, 
though  not  so  much  in  detail  as  I  have  given  them.  He  ex- 
presses his  own  opinion  that  "  there  are  many  arguments  which 
render  Ipse  (or  Ipsum)  the  more  probable,"  but  he  commends 
the  Papal  Revisors  for  retaining  Ipsa  and  he  gives  very  logical 
reasons.  Here,  however,  is  the  cap-sheaf  of  the  evidence  of 
this  "  eminent  Roman  Catholic  scholar  "  (I  translate) : 

'*  But  as  regards  the  sense,  it  must  be  observed  that  both  readings 
have  the  same  meaning;  for  whether  you  say  He  (the  Son  of  the 
woman)  shall  crush  the  serpent's  head,  or  She  (the  Woman  by  her 
Son)  shall  crush  the  serpent's  head,  the  same  doctrine  (or  idea)  is 
expressed." 


A  Rebcttek.  377 

"Wliat  will  Bishop  Kingdon  say  to  this?  Why  did  not  the 
Vicar's  "  scholar  "  report  it  ?  What  infamous  deceit  has  this 
"  Old  Catholic  "  jackanapes,  this  Ritualistic  Thersites  practiced 
upon  the  public  1  lu  his  fourth  letter,  speaking  of  my  argu- 
ment, he  wrote : 

,  "  Surely  if  his  first  contention  be  true,  that  it  makes  absolutely 
no  difference  to  the  meaning  of  Gen.  iii.  15,  whatever  the  gender 
of  the  pronoun,  then,  for  him  at  all  events,  Cadit  questio." 

"  Cadit  questio " — the  discussion  is  at  an  end.  Precisely  I 
And  may  I  humbly  presume  to  think  that  he  will  be  satisfied 
with  the  testimony  of  his  own  witness,  the  "  eminent  Roman 
Catholic  scholar,"  so  "  courteously  "  recommended  to  him  by 
his  "  student,"  counsellor,  and  guide  of  the  Church  Times — 
the  sponsor,  confessedly,  of  many  of  his  monstrosities  ?  Face 
to  face  with  this  witness  I  ask  the  Vicar  to  pause.  At  the 
close  of  his  first  series  of  Strictures  he  bade  me  remember 
that : 

"  Giants  of  learning  who  have  prostituted  their  talents  '  to  make 
.  oid  the  Word  of  God  by  mere  human  tradition,'  and  so  to  deceive 
numberless  souls  dear  to  God's  heart,  will  appear  exceedingly  '  lili- 
putian,'  if  nothing  worse,  at  the  Great  Assize." 

I  quite  agree.  It  is  the  only  truth  he  has  uttered  since  this 
controversy  began.  ''Liliput"  indeed  he  is,  even  when 
jprimed  by  his  "  learned  friends  "  in  the  "  good  old  country," 
and  he  is  also  something  worse.  But  let  him  recall,  while 
there  is  time  for  repentance,  that  God  has  declared  that  "  he 
who  speaketh  less  shall  not  escape."  There  will  be  no 
"  scholars "  of  the  Littledale  stripe  to  act  as  counsel  for  con- 
victed liars  at  the  "  Great  Assize,"  but  every  soul  bloated  with 
falsehood  and  calun.ny,  and  scarred  by  infamies  such  as  he  has 
committed  during  this  discussion,  shall  be  put  to  "  the  penal 
discipline  that  looks  to  health  "  should  it  have  the  good  fortune, 
by  God's  uncovenanted  mercy,  to  escape  the  merciless  fate  of 
Bellarmine  and  Baronius  consigned  by  him  to  "  the  lake  that 
burneth  with  fire  and  brimstone." 
Again.    In  his  first  Strictures,  the  Vicar  had  alleged  the 


378  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

"  awful  consequences  "  of  the  so-called  "  misprint "  to  be  "  an 
undue  exaltation  of  the  Holy  Virgin."  To  meet  this  absurdity 
I  changed  the  venue  (in  the  fifth  and  sixth  letters  of  my  lie- 
joinder),  from  the  Latin  Church  where  Ipsa  was  used,  to  the 
Greek  or  Oriental  Church  where  Autos — Ipse  prevailed.  "We 
found  that  the  Greek  Fathers  simply  exhausted  the  glowing 
splendors  of  their  magnificent  tongue  on  panegyrizing  the 
Blessed  Mother.  This  my  opponent  calls  "  the  most  contemp- 
tible of  shifts."  Indeed!  Well,  let  me  reassure  him  that 
notwithstanding  their  language,  the  same  Fathers  held  as  the 
Catholic  Church  holds  to-day — that  Christ,  the  Seed  of  the 
woman,  is  the  Champion  of  the  human  race  against  the  Devil 
and  all  his  aides  and  abettors.  But  hear  Balaam's  ass  once 
more.     The  Vicar  writes : 

"  The  consent  of  tlie  Fathers  of  the  first  six  centuries  Qie  might 
have  said  of  nineteen  centuries  almost)  is  tlierefore  unanimous  as 
to  the  meaning,  if  not  as  to  the  reading,  of  Gen.  iii.  15.  Not  one 
attributes  the  bruising  of  the  serpent's  head  to  the  Blessed  Virgin  but 
to  Christ  immediately  and  alone." 

Precisely.  This  is  what  Vercellone,  his  own  witness  has  told 
him,  what  the  Bull  Ineffahilis  says,  what  the  Catholic  Church 
teaches,  and  what  I  have  tried  to  get  into  his  malevolently 
ignorant  head  from  the  beginning.  Christ,  our  blessed  Lord 
and  Saviour,  crushes  the  serpent's  head  by  the  prowess  of  Ilis 
own  Divinity  and  Almighty  power,  and  Mary,  as  one  of 
the  redeemed,  the  first  in  glory  among  the  redeemed,  is  said 
to  crush  the  serpent's  head  by  giving  birth  to  Jesus,  and 
in,  by,  and  through  that  grace  and  virtue  with  which  she  was 
endued  by  Him.  The  Doctors  of  the  Church  are  just  as 
unanimous  in  this  teaching  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  as  were 
the  Fathers  of  the  first  six  centuries.  Can  the  Vicar  be  sincere 
in  his  insolent  attempt  to  ignore  this  explanation  of  the  mean- 
ing of  Ipsa?  Or,  has  tlie  unclean  spirit  of  malice  and 
calumny  so  wholly  possessed  him  that  he  cannot  see  it  ? 

Once  more.  Your  readers  will  remember,  that  when  I 
quoted  against  him  the  crushing  evidence  of  Prudentius,  the 
Vicar  cried  out  "  spurious !  "  But  he  asked  permission  to 
consult  his  "  learned  friends "  in  England.    I  assured  your 


A  Rebutter.  379 

readers  that  he  could  get  no  support  for  his  cowardly  statement 
from  his  English  "scliolars"  or  elsewhere.  I  was  correct 
again.  His  friends,  while  they  blush  for  his  audacious  ignor- 
ance, assure  him  that  my  quotation  from  Prudentius  "  is  genu- 
ine," and  once  more  this  wretched  pilferer  of  scraps,  and  re- 
tailer of  exploded  calumnies,  "  bites  the  dust." 

And  finally.  Your  readers  will  remember,  that  in  the  fifth 
letter  of  his  first  Strictures  the  Vicar  said : 

"  I  am  credibly  informed  that  no  iiistance  is  to  be  found  in  any 
Ecclesiastical  writer  (mark  you !)  of  even  the  corrupt  reading  Ipsa 
being  interpreted  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  till  St.  Bernard's  time  (12th 
Century)." 

"  Credibly  informed,"  forsooth !  He  has  confessedly  been 
but  a  wind-bag  and  foot-ball  for  every  so-called  "  scholar  "  to 
whom  he  appealed  for  help.  His  repeated  confession  of  his 
reliance  on  "  learned  friends  "  explains  his  contemptible  cow- 
ardice in  refusing  to  meet  me  on  the  public  platform.  On 
more  than  one  occasion,  he  taunted  me  with  receiving  assist- 
ance from  distinguished  Catholic  scholars.  This  provoked 
some  amusement  among  your  readers  who  recalled  my  chal- 
lenge to  him  and  Bishop  Kingdon.  His  miserable  insinuation 
but  witnessed  to  the  low  vulgarity  and  baseness  of  the  pol- 
troon, with  whom  it  is  my  misfortune  to  deal.  He  hoped 
thereby  to  screen  himself  from  the  scorn  and  contempt  of  fair- 
minded  Protestants  in  this  community,  but  he  has — failed. 

Now,  I  accepted  the  gauntlet  thrown  down  by  the  Vicar's 
informer.  In  the  twenty-eighth  letter  of  my  liejolnder  I 
produced  eleven  "  Ecclesiastical  writers  "  (and  I  offered  to  pro- 
duce twenty-eight),  who  interpret  Ipsa  of  the  Blessed  Virgin 
before  St.  Bernard's  time.  What  did  he  say  to  this  ?  Here 
are  his  words : 

"Notice  in  the  first  place  that  my  opponent  dares  not  call  them 
Fathere,  because  he  knows  that  but  few,  if  any,  of  them  rank  with 
what  his  own  Church  technically  style  '  the  Fathers.'  " 

That  is  to  say,  he  asked  me  for  "  Ecclesiastical  writers  "  and 
now  howls  because  he  gets  them.  He  reminds  me  of  the 
little  boy  who  cried  bitterly  because  he  could  not  eat  all  the 


380  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

pudding  his  mother  gave  him.  Well,  St.  Eplirem  is  not  only 
a  "  Father "  of  the  Church  but  a  Doctor  as  well ;  St.  John 
Damascene  is  called  the  last  of  the  Greek  Fathers,  while  even 
Prudentius  is  recKoned  a  "  Father  "  by  the  learned  Protestant 
Le  Clerc  in  his  '*  Primitive  Fathers,"  p.  281,  and  Erasmus  de- 
clares that  he  deserves  to  be  ranked  among  the  gravest  Doc- 
tors of  the  Church.  St.  Proclus  was  an  illustrious  Father  of 
the  Church,  St.  Tarasius  a  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  and 
Chrysippus  a  Presbyter  of  Jerusalem.  I  did  not  quote  from 
these  three,  but  I  mentioned  them  as  authorities  for  the  use 
of  Ipia,  or  the  idea  expressed  by  it,  before  St.  Bernard's  tune. 
I  have  their  words  before  me  in  Greek  and  Latin, — produce- 
able  on  demand  of  Bishop  Kingdon. 
Again  he  says : 

(Notice)  "fn  the  second  (place),  that  he  does  not  inform  us  how 
many  of  the  tweuty-eight  belong  to  the  first  six  centuries,  which 
are  all  I  ask  for,  though  in  an  obiter  dictum  I  said  something 
about  St.  Bernard.'''' 

Hal  Ha!!  Ha!!!  « Obiter  dictum,"  indeed !  How  com- 
plimentary to  the  "  scholar "  (this  time  Bishop  Kingdon  per- 
haps), who  so  badly  fooled  him  !  "  Something  about  St.  Ber- 
nard ! "  He  pretends  to  have  forgotten  all  about  it  though 
he  assured  your  readers  that  he  was  "  credibly  informed "  it 
was  true.    Ye  Gods  and  little  fishes ! 

Again  he  writes : 

(Notice)  "in  the  third  (place),  that  he  does  not  say  how  many 
came  after  St.  Bernard's  time  (12th  Century)." 

Of  coarse  I  don't!  He  confined  me  to  that  time — else  I 
could  fill  a  column.  But  note  the  malicious  pretence  that  I 
had  gone  outside  his  limits.  The  twenty-eight  writers  of 
whom  I  spoke  (and  to  which  I  can  now  add),  are  all  before 
St.  Bernard's  time, — and  I  emphatically  so  declared.  I  gave 
the  names  of  eleven  of  these  writers,  with  quotations  from 
some  only,  to  economize  space.  They  are  all  what  he  de- 
manded— "  Ecclesiastical  writers  ";  three  of  them,  at  least,  are 
illustrious  "  Fathers,"  and  eight  of  them  are  within  the  first  six 
centuries.    Yet  he  mendaciously  asserts,  that  I  gave  two  ex- 


A  Rebutter.  381 

tracts  from  writers  later  than  St.  Bernard !  I  beg  your  readers 
to  verify  my  statement  by  a  reference  to  the  end  of  the 
twenty-eighth  letter  of  my  liejohider.  I  gave  atie  extract 
from  the  celebrated  Lipsius,  but  I  said  it  was  not  to  count 
against  the  Vicar,  "since  Lipsius  lived  long  after  St.  Ber- 
nard." 

This  unfortunate  man  has  more  than  once  assured  us,  on 
the  authority  of  "  God's  holy  Word,  the  Word  of  Truth,"  that 
"  all  liars  shall  have  their  part  in  the  lake  that  burneth  with 
fire  and  brimstone."  He  has  given  many  proofs  that  he  is 
willing  to  risk  it. 

Sixth  Lktteb. — Here  the  Vicar  quotes  very  beautiful  words 
from  St.  Ephrera,  with  every  one  of  which  I  most  heartily 
agree.  They  but  express,  in  the  Saint's  magnificent  way,  the 
glory  of  Christ's  triumph  over  Satan,  and  our  redemption  by 
His  Cross  and  Passion.  The  result  of  this  victory  was  to  be 
what  St.  Paul  declared  to  the  Romans :  "  The  God  of  peace 
shall  bruise  Satan  under  your  feet  speedily."  St.  Ephrem 
knew  very  well,  that  among  all  the  redeemed  of  Christ,  His 
blessed  Mother  supereminently  illustrated  in  her  life  this  re- 
sult. Therefore  he  addresses  her  in  words  already  given : 
"  Hail  Paradise  of  delights  ....  Hail,  thou  pure  one  who 
crushed  the  head  of  the  most  wicked  dragon  and  hurled  him 
bound  in  chains  into  the  abyss."  The  Vicar,  with  perverse 
stupidity,  alleges  that  /lis  quotations  prove  mine  to  be  "  spuri- 
ous." May  God  forgive  himl  He  also  complained  that  I 
gave  no  reference.  It  does  not  make  much  difference  to  him, 
but  here  it  is :  (I  translate) — "  Prayer  to  the  Mother  of  God, 
Greek  Translation  E.— F.,  p.  547.  Latin  Translation,  Vol.  3." 
The  Greek  and  Latin  are  before  me.  Let  me  add  to  St. 
Ephrem's  prayer  a  very  good  commentary  upon  it. 

In  Hymn  27,  the  Saint  writes : 

"Truly  it  is  Thou  and  Thy  Mother  only  who  are  fair  altogether. 
For  m  Thee  there  is  no  stain,  and  in  Thy  Mother  no  spot.  But  my 
sons  (i.e.,  the  members  of  the  Church  of  Edessa)  are  far  from  resem- 
bling this  twofold  fairness."  And  again :  "Two  were  made  simple, 
innocent,  perfectly  like  each  other — Mary  and  Eve — ^but  afterwards 
one  became  the  cause  of  our  death,  the  other  of  our  life"  (u.  327a). 


882  Ii'SE,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

The  "scholars"  wlio  supply  this  Ritualistic  wind-bag  with 
references  and  scrape,  will  Hnd  the  above  quotations  in  Bick- 
ell's  critical  edition  of  the  Ifynma  of  St.  Ephreni,  p.  122. 

When  the  Vicar  s  again  "six  weeks"  to  devote  to  the 
Fathers,  let  me  conm.jnd  to  him  the  magnificent  edition  of 
the  Hymns  and  Sermons  of  St.  Ephrem,  in  Syriae  and  Latin, 
recently  completed  by  the  learned  Professor  Lamy,  of  Louvain 
Univernity,  in  3  vols.,  4to. 

He  closes  the  letter  under  consideration  with  a  telling  illus- 
tration from  St.  Liguori,  of  the  intercession  of  the  Blessed 
Mother  with  her  Divine  Son.  I  have  already  so  fully  ex- 
j)lained  and  vindicated  the  principles  of  intercessory  prayer 
(see  liejohider,  23d  letter),  that  I  need  not  remark  u])ou  it 
here.  His  tiresome  jumbling  of  subjects  will,  however,  neces- 
sitate a  word  later  on. 

Seventh  Letter. — My  remarks  on  this  will  be  very  brief. 
At  the  close  of  his  first  Strlctui'cs  he  started  an  objection,  hi 
twenty  lines,  to  the  Catholic  view  of  the  Blessed  Virgin's 
position  based  on  the  alleged  silence  of  Scripture.  This  he 
did  to  draw  me  off  from  a  logical  treatment  of  tlie  matter  in 
liand.  Now,  I  have  given  some  years  to  the  study  of  Euclid  ; 
I  have  also  spent  some  years  in  walks  amid  the  majestic  tow- 
ers and  under  the  sweeping  arches,  in  the  sun-lit  glades  and 
over  the  prairie  amphitheatres  of  Catholic  thought,  and  it  is 
simple  fact  to  say,  that  the  logic  of  the  former  is  not  more 
irrefragal)le  than  that  of  the  latter — as  the  intellectual  system 
of  Christianity.  Therefore  the  Vicar's  attempt  to  draw  me 
in  his  direction  did  not  succeed.  But  I  offered  to  discuss  in 
the  Anglican  pulpits  this  text :  "  Mary,  the  Mother  of  Jesus, 
in  Prophecy  and  its  Fulfilment  interpreted  by  Antiquity," — 
in  other  words,  Mary  m  the  Gosjyels ;  or,  if  that  did  not  suit 
my  opponents,  I  challenged  Bishop  Kingdon  to  lead  out  a 
dozen  of  his  Oxford  "  scholars  "  to  discuss  it  before  any  audi- 
ence. The  gauntlet  thus  fairly  thrown  down  remains  un- 
touched, and  I  do  not  propose  at  this  stage  to  take  up  a  new 
line  of  argument.  I  do  reassert,  however,  that  no  mathemat- 
ical proposition  is  more  rigorously  demonstrable  than  is  the 


A  Rebutter.  383 

direct  contradict(»ry  of  tlie  Protestant  position  on  this  matter. 
When  Oxford,  led  by  Bishop  Kingdon,  can  muster  courage  tf» 
meet  me  I  will  be  on  hand. 

Eighth  Letter. — His  remarks  here  on  the  authenticity  of 
the  "Acts  of  the  Martyrdom  of  St.  Andrew,"  I  had  already 
anticipated  by  a  frank  and  honest  statement  of  the  authorities. 
I  will  now  add,  however,  that  the  counter-arguments  of  Cave 
are  founded  on  a  falsilication  of  facts. 

He  perverts,  though,  and  misrepresents  the  object  of  my 
quoting  this  document.  I  was  not  discussing  the  Innnaculate 
Conception  when  I  quoted  the  words  alleged  to  be  St. 
Andrew's :  (Our  Lord)  "  was  born  of  a  blameless  Virgin."  As 
your  honest  re.iders  will  confess,  I  was  then  engaged  in  setting 
before  them  the  picture  of  Mary  as  the  Greek  Fathers  almw 
have  painted  her  from  the  very  dawn  of  Christianity, — and  in 
regions  where  Ipsa  was  unknown. 

Now,  however,  that  his  dishonesty,  ignorance,  and  stupidity 
has  put  me  to  it,  and  all  the  authorities  are  in  my  hand,  I  had 
better  nulvcrize  him. 

In  the  first  ))lace,  then,  let  me  call  attention  to  the  Vicar's 
utter  incapacity  to  understand  the  matters  he  has  dared  to 
handle.  lie  refers  your  readers  to  page  xvi.  of  the  Introduc- 
tion to  Volume  XVI.  of  Clarke's  Ante-Nicene  Library,  now 
before  me.     Let  us  examine  its  contents. 

The  "  Introduction  "  is  made  uj)  of  critical  notices  of  docu- 
ments of  which  a  translation  is  given  in  the  volume.  Among 
these  notices  is  one  of  a  book  entitled — Acts  of  Andrew.  A 
short  history  of  the  disputed  authorship  is  then  given.  Im- 
mediately thereupon  the  editors  say  : 

"  This  hook  (the  Acts  of  Andrew)  is  7nuch  the  same  in  sub- 
stance with  the  celebrated  Preshyterornm  et  Diaconormn 
Achahie  de  Martyrio  S.  Andreae  Apostoli  epistola  encyclica 
— (Encyclical  Letter  of  the  Priests  and  Deacons  of  Achaia  con- 
cerning the  Martyrdom  of  St.  Andrew  the  Apostle)." 

Now,  I  am  not  concerned  here  with  the  extent  of  their  dif- 
ference. I  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  "  book  "  as  such.  In 
the  fifth  letter  of  my  Eejoinder  I  professed  to  quote  from 


384  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

"  the  celebrated  letter,^''  and  I  am  obligated  to  your  readers  only 
to  prove  the  credibility  of  the  witness  whose  testimony  I 
offered  to  them.  I  hope  the  Vicar  will  admit  that  this  is  a 
lawyer-like  view  of  my  duty,  since  he  has  assured  us  that 
"  there  are  lawyers  and  lawyers." 

Well,  then,  this  "celebrated  letter"  was  at  first  considered 
spurious,  or  at  least  doubtful,  because  it  was  in  Latin,  and  no 
Greek  copy  known ;  but  since  the  Greek  was  found  in  the 
Bodleian  Library,  Oxford  University,  and  published  by  Charles 
Christian  Woog,  a  learned  Protestant,  in  1749,  all  intelligent 
doubt  has  ceased,  so  that  Morcelli,  the  famous  Jesuit  archceolo- 
gian  and  epigraphist,  made  no  difficulty  about  inserting  it  as 
true  and  authentic  in  his  Calendar  of  the  Church  of  Constan- 
tinople, under  the  date  of  the  30th  November.  Woog  himself 
held  it  to  be  a  genuine  writing  of  the  Apostolic  age,  composed 
a])out  A.D.  80,  and  he  has  most  ably  vindicated  it  against  all 
its  assailants.  What  great  scholars  support  him?  Morcelli, 
Cardinals  Baronius  and  Bellarmine,  Gallandus,  Piazza,  Natalia 
Alexander,  and  Lamper.  Who  oppose  him  ?  Fabricius,  who 
only  thinks  it  later  than  the  Apostolic  age,  and  the  Anglican 
scholar.  Cave ;  but  the  latter  is  ruled  out  as  an  authority,  be- 
cause his  counter-arguments  are  based  upon  a  falsification  of 
facts.  The  editors  of  Clarke's  Library  mention  Thilo,  but  it  is 
not  very  clear  what  his  opinion  is.  Pusey  admits  that  "  it 
would,  if  genuine,  have  the  same  authority  as  Holy  Scripture," 
and  he  does  not  even  attempt  to  dispute  it.  They  aU,  how- 
ever, agree  to  assign  the  "  celebrated  letter "  a  place  among 
the  earliest  records  of  the  Church.  This  was  all  I  claimed  for 
it  originally,  though  now  your  readers  will  concede,  if  evidence 
is  worth  anything,  that  the  lips  of  my  witness  keep  Apostolic 
testimony. 

Again :  The  editors  of  Clarke's  Library,  speaking  of  the 
"  book,"  say  that — 

"  There  does  not  seem  to  be  any  undoubted  quotation  of  it 
before  the  eighth  and  the  tenth  centuries." 

I  am  not  concerned  to  dispute  this  statement  with  regard  to 
the  "  book  "  as  such,  but  it  is  utterly  untrue  as  to  the  "  letter  "; 
for  from  it  is  taken  the  Preface  of  the  Masp  In  the  Gothic 


A  Rebutter.  385 

Missal  of  the  Sixth  Century.  My  authority  liere  is  absoUito 
and  final,  a  "cloud  of  witnesses"  in  himself — Mabillon,  Litur- 
(jiii  Gallica,  L.  3,  n.  17,  p.  221. 

I  Buhinit,  therefore,  to  the  jury  of  your  readers  that  as  well 
the  competency  as  the  credibility  of  my  witness  is  unimpeach- 
able. But  I  will  now  go  farther.  1  will  do  what,  keepinj^ 
good  faith  with  your  readers,  I  did  not  do  before ;  that  is,  1 
will  (piote  the  "celebrated  letter"  as  evidence  of  the  belief  in 
the  Immaculate  Conception  in  Apostolic  times.  1  give  the 
Litin,  with  an  English  translation,  as  follows : 

"  Et  quoniam  de  iuimaculata  terra  factus  fuerat  homo 
primus,  qui  ])er  ligni  prcvaricationem  mundo  mortem  intulerat : 
necessarium  fuit,  ut  de  immaculata  Virgine  nasceretur  j)er~ 
fectus  homo  Filius  Dei,  vitam  aeternam,  quam  per  Adanmm 
perdiderant  homines,  rcpararet,  ac  per  lignum  Crucis  lignum 
concupiscentiae  excluderet — And  since  the  first  man,  who 
brought  death  into  the  world  through  the  tree  of  prevarica- 
tion, had  been  made  from  the  immaculate  (spotless,  blameless) 
earth,  it  was  necessary  that  the  Son  of  God  should  be  begotten 
a  perfect  man  from  an  immaculate  (spotless,  blameless)  Virgin, 
that  lie  nn'ght  restore  that  eternal  life  whicli  men  had  lost 
through  Adam,  and  cut  off  the  tree  of  carnal  desire  by  the  tree 
of  the  Cross." 

This  comparison  of  the  virgin  earth  with  the  immaculate 
Virgin  shows  us  Mary  immaculate  in  her  very  origin,  even  as 
was  the  earth  of  which  the  first  man  was  formed,  before  God 
said  to  Adam  :  "  Cursed  is  the  earth  in  thy  work."  Moreovei-, 
this  celebrated  comparison  became  a  common  expressson  with 
the  Fathers.  Take,  for  instance,  St.  Hippolytus,  Bishop  and 
Martyr,  early  in  the  third  century.  Speaking  first  of  our 
Lord,  he  says : 

"He  was  the  Ark  formed  of  incorruptible  wood.  For  by 
this  is  signified  that  Ills  tabernacle  was  exernptfrom  putridity 
and  corruption,  which  brought  forth  no  corruption  or  sin. 
But  the  Lord  was  exempt  from  sin,  of  wood  not  ohnoxions  to 
corruption  according  to  man;  that  is,  of  the  Virgin  and  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  covered  within  and  without  with  the  pure  gold  of 
the  Word  of  God."    The  same  comparison  is  instituted  between 


386  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Eve,  while  yet  immaculate  and  incorrupt,  that  is  to  say,  not 
subject  to  original  sin,  and  the  Blessed  Virgin,  by  Saints  Jus- 
tin and  Irenseus,  Tertullian,  St.  Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  and  St. 
Epiphanius.  I  refer  your  readers  to  the  fifth  and  sixth  letters 
of  my  Rejoinder,  where  I  have  quoted  from  all  th  )se  Fathers 
in  a  different  connection. 

I  address  myself  now  to  his  remarks  on  the  Liturgies.  Here 
I  beg  an  attentive  and  interested  hearing.  In  the  fifth  letter 
of  my  Rejoinder  I  quoted  from  the  Liturgy  of  St.  James. 
Again  I  very  properly  referred  to  its  evidential  value.  I  do 
not  remark  upon  the  silly  comments  he  makes  about  this  Lit- 
iirgy — they  are  beneath  notice.  What  I  want  to  consider  is 
his  pestilent  assertion  that  the  Eastern  churches  were  accus- 
tomed to  pray  for  the  repose  of  the  soyl  of  Oue  Blessed  Lady. 
In  proof  of  this  he  says : 

"  To  take  as  an  example  the  Cultus  of  the  Virgin  with  which  we 
are  now  dealing.  An  eighth  century  manuscript  of  St.  Chrysostom's 
Liturgy  mentions  the  Blessed  Virgin  only  twice,  once  to  pray  for 
her  (italics  his)  in  common  with  the  rest  of  the  faithful  departed  in 
Paradise." 

This  astounding  statement  I  assure  your  readers  is  a  r 
and  unblushing  falsehood.  What  it  lacks  in  malice  . 
up  by  criminal  ignorance.  Please  follow  me  patiently,  i.y 
readers,  while  I  expose  the  manner  in  which  this  unscrupulous 
"  sacerdotal  pretender"  has  turned  a  holy  thing  to  his  vile  uses. 
As  has  been  my  rule,  the  authorities  I  follow  are  the  great 
authorities — Renaudot,  Asseman,  Cardinal  Bona,  Goar,  and  Leo 
Allatius.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  Rev.  G.  Williams, 
King's  College,  Cambridge,  assured  Pusey  that,  "  We  cannot 
have  a  more  competent  witness  than  Leo  Allatius,"  on  the 
Greek  Ofiice  Books.  Let,  then,  these  scholars  lead  us  through 
the  Eastern  Liturgies. 

I  will  first  consider  the  Liturgy  of  St.  Mark,  the  Liturgy  of 
the  Church  of  Alexandria.  I  extract  from  that  part  of  it 
known  to  Catholics  as  the  Canon — the  most  sacred  part  of  the 
Mass — what  is  called  a  commemoration. 

"  To  the  souls  of  our  fathers  and  brethren  who  aforetime  have 
kept  ii<  ihe  faith  of  Christ,  give  rest  O  Lord  our  Ood ;  being  mind- 


A  Rebutter.  387 

ful  of  our  forefathers  from  the  beginning,  fathers,  patriarchs,  proph- 
ets, apostles,  martyrs,  confessors,  bishops,  saints,  and  just  men,  and 
of  every  spirit  that  hath  been  perfected  in  the  faith  of  Christ,  and  of 
those  of  whom  we  make  commemoration  this  day,  and  of  our  holy 
father,  Mark,  Apostle  and  Evangelist,  who  showed  us  the  way  of 
salvation.  [Here  is  said  the  Hail  Mary.]  Hail,  full  of  grace,  the 
Loi-d  is  with  thee ;  blessed  art  thou  among  women,  and  blessed  is 
the  fruit  of  thy  womb,  because  thou  hast  brought  forth  the  Saviour 
of  our  souls.  [Then  the  priest  proceeds,  raising  his  voice]  and  (be 
mindful)  especially  of  our  all  holy,  unspotted,  and  blessed  Lady 
the  Mother  of  Ood,  the  ever  Virgin  Mary"  (Renaudot:  Litm-giae 
Orientales,  vol.  i.,  pp.  149,  150). 

Who  but  the  Vicar  and  "  his  kidney,"  can  be  such  a  blunder- 
ing ignoramus  as  not  to  see  the  difference  between  praying  for 
mercy  upon  the  souls  of  the  faithful  departed,  and  praying  Jy 
the  hallowed  memory  of  the  saints  ?  Is  he  so  blind  as  not  to 
be  able  to  read  the  "  Hail  Mary  "  when  it  is  set  before  his  eyes 
in  clear,  bold  type  ?  What  did  the  Psalmist  mean  when  he 
said,  "  O  Lord  I  remember  David  and  all  his  meekness  "  ?  The 
above  extract  contains  the  first  portion  of  the  "  Hail  Mary," 
sufficient  evidence,  if  there  were  no  other,  of  the  absurdity  of 
the  Vicar's  assertion.  But  some  "  scholar  "  from  the  "  good 
old  country  " — from  the  Church  Times  factory — will  perhaps 
"  credibly  inform  "  him  that  the  "  Hail  Mary  "  is  a  manifest 
interpolation.  Well,  what  then  ?  Such  a  plea  is  entirely  be- 
side the  mark,  as  your  readers  will  admit.  Granted,  for  the 
sake  of  argument,  that  the  "  Hail  Mary  "  found  no  place  in  the 
•  earliest  form  of  the  Liturgy,  what  manner  cf  prayer  must  that 
have  been  in  which  this  invocation  could  be  inserted  ?  What 
man  out  of  Bedlam  (or  its  equivalent.  High, — Low, — Broad, — 
No, — Church  Anglicanism)  could  imagine  the  Alexandrian 
Christians  to  have  interrupted  by  s^ich  an  interpolation  a  prayer 
for  the  repose  of  our  Lady's  soul  ?  The  simple  fact  (so  plain 
to  a  Catholic)  is,  that  the  Mother  of  God  is  commemai'ated, 
not,  of  course,  prayed  for. 

But  perhaps  Bishop  Kingdon,  who  knew  so  much  about  the 
"  tremendous  importance  "  of  Ipsa,  will  instruct  his  Vicar  (if  he 
has  not  soured  on  him  because  of  that  obiter  dictum  about  St. 
Bernard),  that  the  Alexandrian  Christians,  when  thoy  said,  "  be 


888  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

mindful  of  the  saints,"  must  have  intended  to  pray  for  them  I 
The  gudgeons  of  the  "  Mission  Church  "  may  be  caught  with 
bait  like  this.  I  may  then  ask  once  more,  wliat  the  Psalmist 
meant  when  he  said,  "  O  Lord !  remember  David  and  all  his 
meekness"?  Fortunately,  however,  I  can  pin  down  these 
shufflers — the  Oxford  twain — with  something  more  pointed 
than  a  mere  a  pari  argument. 

I  will  now  give  a  passage  from  the  Coptic  Liturgy  of  St. 
Cyril,  which  is  only  another  recension  of  that  called  after  St. 
Mark.  The  following  prayer  occupies  in  St.  Cyril's^Liturgy 
exactly  the  same  place  as  that  which  I  quoted  from  "  St.  Mark  ": 

"Grant  rest  to  our  fathers  and  brethren  who  have  slept,  and 
whose  souls  Thou  hast  received.  Be  mindful  also  of  all  the  saints 
who  from  the  beginning  have  been  pleasing  to  Thee,  our  holy- 
fathers,  patriarchs,  prophets,  apostles,  evangelists,  martyrs,  confes- 
sors, preachers,  and  all  the  spirits  of  the  just  who  have  been  i)er- 
fected  in  the  faith.  But  especially  of  the  holy  and  most  glorious 
Mother  of  God,  ever  Virgin,  the  pure  and  stainless  Saint  Mary  .... 
and  of  the  whole  choir  of  Thy  saints. 

(The  Priest) :  And  we,  O  Loi-d,  are  not  worthy  to  make  supplica- 
tion for  those  blessed  ones ;  but  whereas  they  stand  before  the  throne 
of  Thy  only  begotten  Son.  May  they  intercede  in  our  place  for 
our  poverty  and  weakness.  Forgive  us  our  transgressions  for  the 
sake  of  their  prayers  in  our  behalf,  and  for  the  sake  of  Thy  blessed 
name  which  is  invoked  upon  us"  (Renaudot:  Lit.  Orient.,  i.,  pp. 
41,  42). 

From  the  same  authority  I  can  match  this  extract  with  par- 
allel passages  from  the  Coptic  Liturgies  or  Anaphorse  of  St. 
Gregory  and  St.  Basil  the  Great.  The  latter,  with  that  of  St. 
Chrysostom,  holds  undisturbed  sway  in  the  East  to-day,  among 
Catholics  and  schismatics  alike. 

Now,  your  readers  will  easily  see  that  to  " commemorate^* 
a  saint  implies  that — in  the  words  of  St.  Cyril's  Liturgy — he 
"  stands  before  the  thronu  "  of  God  in  eternal  blessedness  mak- 
ing intercession  for  us;  but  to  " jo^-ay/b?' "  a  person  implies 
that  he  is  in  some  place  or  state  in  which  our  intercession  can 
benefit  him. 

But  St.  Cyril  (of  Jerusalem)  goes  further  and  explains  that 
the  practice  of  the  Church  was  to  commemorate  not  only 


A  Rebdttke.  389 

Patriarchs,  Prophets,  Apostles,  etc.,  hut  also  to  pray  for  all 
other  departed  souls,  and  he  tells  us  the  reason  why  they  com- 
memorated one  class  and  prayed  for  the  other.  "  We  com- 
memorate,^' he  says,  "  those  who  have  fallen  asleep  before  us, 
FiKST,  Patriarchs,  Prophets,  Apostles,  that  God,  hy  their 
prayers  and  mteroession,  would  receive  our  petition:  then, 
ALSO,  on  behalf  of  the  holy  Fathers  and  Bishops  who  have 
fallen  asleep  before  us,  and  of  all,  in  short,  who  have  already 
fallen  asleep  amongst  us,  believing  this  to  he  a  very  great  help 
to  those  souls,  for  which  the  prayer  is  offered  up,  while  the 
holy  and  most  tremendous  Victim  lies  present "  (Catech.  23, 
Myst.  5,  n.  10). 

From  these  words  of  St.  Cyril  it  is  very  clear  that  prayers 
were  offered  to  God  not  for  Patriarchs  and  Prophets,  etc.,  bat 
for  those  souls  who  had  departed  this  life  in  sin,  that  God 
might  be  propitiated  in  •  their  behalf  and  grant  a  respite  to 
their  punishment.  The  same  explanation  is  given  by  St. 
Epiphanius,  who  says : 

"  For  we  make  a  commemoration  of  the  just  aad  on  behalf  of 
sinners;  on  behalf  of  sinners,  supplicating  mercy  from  God;  and 
for  the  just,  both  Patriarchs,  Prophets,  Apostles  ....  in  order 
that  on  account  of  the  honor  which  we  pay  to  Christ,  we  may  sep- 
arate him  from  the  race  of  men  "  {Haerea.  75,  n.  8). 

St.  John  Chrysostom  expresses  himself  in  the  same  manner : 

"  Let  us  not  then  grow  weary  of  helping  the  departed,  of  offering 
up  prayers  for  them,  for  even  the  common  expiation  of  the  world 
lies  (before  us).  By  this  made  confident,  we  then  pray  for  the 
world  and  name  them  with  martyrs,  with  confessors,  with  priests. 
Yea,  for  one  body  are  we  all,  although  some  members  are  more 
glorious  than  others.  And  it  is  possible  to  gather  from  all  sides 
pardon  for  them  from  tbe  prayers — from  the  gifis  (offered)  in  their 
behalf— /rom  those  who  are  named  with  them  "  (Hom.  Ixi.  on  I. 
Cor.,  n.  5). 

Having  thus  made  clear  to  your  Protestant  readers,  the  dis- 
tinction between  commemorating  a  saint  and  praying  for  a 
person,  I  will  return  to  the  Liturgy  of  St.  James — the  Jeru- 
salem Rite,  from  which  are  derived  forty  Syro-Jacobite  Litur- 
gies or  Offices,  as  well  as  that  of  St.  Chrysostom  to  be  next 


390  Ipse,  Ipba,  Ipsum. 

discussed.  We  find  in  this  Liturgy  (St.  James'),  in  the  Com- 
memoration at  Mass,  these  words : 

"Let  us  commemorate  our  All-holy,  Immaculate,  most  glorious 
and  blessed  Lady,  the  ever-Virgin  Mother  of  God  and  all  the 
saints,  that  bj  their  prayers  and  intercessions  we  may  all  obtain 
mercy"  (Asseman,  t.  v.,  p.  24). 

And  this  is  followed  (pp.  44,  45)  by  a  singularly  devout  and 
affectionate  prayer  to  her  whom  "  all  creatures  congratulate," 
to  her  who  is  "  ever  blessed,  every  way  blameless,  more  honor- 
able than  the  Cherubim,  more  glorious  than  the  Seraphim, 
....  the  hallowed  temple,  the  spiritual  paradise  (of  God), 
and  glory  of  Virgins." 

Again,  in  the  Syrian  Hite,  in  the  Commemoration  at  Mass, 
we  read : 

^'Priest.  Especially  and  first  of  all,  we  make  mention  of  the 
Holy,  Glorious,  and  Ever- Virgin  Mary,  etc.  Deacon.  Remember 
her,  Lord  God,  and  at  her  holy  and  pure  prayers  be  propitious,  have 
merey  uix)n  us,  and  favorably  hear  our  prayers.  Priest.  Mother  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  pray  for  me  to  thy  Son,  Only-begotten,  Who 
came  of  thee,  that,  having  remitted  my  sins  tmd  debts.  He  may  ac- 
cept from  my  humble  and  sinful  hands  this  sacrifice,  which  is  ofl'ered 
by  my  vileness  upon  this  altar,  through  thy  intercession.  Mother 
most  holy"  (Asseman,  t.  v.,  p.  186). 

I  come  now  to  the  Liturgy  of  St.  Chrysostom.  I  have  said 
that  it  was  derived  from  that  of  St.  James.  My  authorities 
say  that  this  Liturgy,  with  that  of  St.  Basil  the  Great,  already 
referred  to,  holds  undisputed  sway  in  the  East  to-day.  They 
are  now  such  as  they  were  when  they  came  from  the  hands  of 
the  great  men  whose  names  they  bear,  and  they  are  used  by 
Catholics  and  Schismatics  alike.  They  are  used  by  the  Rus- 
sian Church  in  the  Empire  of  Russia  itself  and  throughout  all 
the  imperial  dominions ;  not,  indeed,  in  their  Greek  form  but 
in  the  Sclavonic,  which  is  the  liturgical  language  in  all  those 
parts.  They  are  used  in  the  Kingdom  of  Greece  and  its  de- 
pendencies, and  have  universal  sway  among  the  Mingrelians, 
Wallachians,  Ruthenians,  Rascians,  Bulgarians,  and  Albanians, 
as  well  as  with  all  tlie  Uniat  or  Melchite  Greeks  of  the  four 
Patriarchates  of   Constantinople,   Alexandria,  Antioch,   and 


A  Rebutter.  391 

Jerusalem.  The  United  Greeks  of  Italy  and  those  of  the 
Austrian  Empire  also  use  them.  St.  Basil's  Liturgy,  we  have 
seen,  holds  tho  sime  language  as  that  of  St.  Cyril  given  above. 
Now,  the  Liturgy  of  St.  Chrysostom,  by  Goar,  p.  78  (Paris, 
1647),  contains  the  same  sort  of  commemoration  with  the 
meaning  so  clearly  given  by  St.  Cyril. 

But,  perhaps,  some  tricky  "  student "  or  "  scholar '-  has  told 
the  Vicar  of  a  well-known  passage  from  "an  eighth  century 
manuscript  of  St.  Chrysostora's  Liturgy,"  in  which  the  Holy 
Sacrifice  is  said  to  be  offered  "  on  behalf  of  "  (the  Greek  pre- 
position Iluper),  that  is  to  say,  in  honor  o/'the  Saints  and  our 
Blessed  Lady.  Well,  in  the  Mass  to-day,  according  to  the  Rite 
of  St.  Chrysostom,  we  find  the  Offertory  made : 

^^  In  honor  and  memory  of  our  singularly  blessed  and  glorioua 
Queen,  Mary  Theotokos  and  Ever- Virgin ;  at  whose  intercession,  O 
Lord,  receive,  O  Lord,  this  Sacrifice  unto  Thy  altar  which  is  beyond 
the  Heavens  "  (Groar,  Euchologium  Graecorum,  p.  58). 

Now,  granting  for  argument's  sake,  that  the  passage  in  ques- 
tion is  of  doubtful  interpretation  whatever  may  be  the  precise 
force  of  the  Greek  preposition  IIvj)er,  which  I  have  translated 
by  the  words  "ow-  behalf  of,^"*  will  Bishop  Kingdon,  laying 
aside  for  a  moment  Ipsa  and  its  "  awful  consequences  " — will 
he,  I  ask,  dare — in  the  face  of  the  absolute  unanimity  of  the 
conservative  Eastern  Church,  Catholic,  Schismatic,  Jacobite, 
and  Nestorian  against  the  Vicar's  miserable  second-hand  false- 
hood,— will  he,  I  again  repeat,  dare  to  put  his  Episcopal  im- 
primatur on  the  proposition  that  the  Greek  preposition 
Iluper  will  bear  the  meaning  of  the  English  preposition  ^^for" 
in  the  phrase  ''^  to  pray  for''''  a  person? 

It  makes  a  serious  man  to  bum  with  indignation !  One  day 
they  juggle  with  a  YoSavl  pronoun^  another  with  a  Greek  ^r^- 
osition.  In  the  latter  case  as  in  the  former  I  give  them  their 
choice  of  acknowledging — either  that  they  have  perpetrated 
an  egregious  and  unpardonable  blunder,  or  that  they  have  told 
an  impudent  falsehood. 

When  a  gentleman  finds  that  he  has  unwittingly  cast  a  slur 
upon  the  hitherto  stainless  memory  of  another  man's  wife  or 


392  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

sister,  he  hastens  to  make  a  candid  retraction  and  an  humble 
apology.  My  opponents  appear  to  think  that  the  memory  of 
the  Virgin  Mother  of  God  is  entitled  to  less  consideration 
(perhaps  they  imagine  it  is  less  affectionately  cherished)  than 
that  of  the  mother  or  sister  of  the  humblest  of  us  all.  For  in 
her  case  they  have  substituted  a  repetition  of  the  ofiFence  for 
the  usual  apology  and  retraction.  I  leave  their  punishment  in 
the  hands  of  vour  fair-minded  readers. 

A  parting  word  on  the  Greek  Liturgies.  The  Vicar,  with 
his  usual  stupidity,  writes : 

"The  fact  is,  the  Liturgies,  more  than  any  other  Church  docu- 
ments, have  been  subjected  to  alterations,  excisions,  and  additions 
from  time  to  time  in  the  days  of  the  manuscripts.  A  comparison  of 
existing  manuscripts  tells  us  this." 

Well,  what  then  ?    Let  the  learned  Renaudot  answer : 

"  Their  (the  Liturgies')  weight  does  not  depend  on  the  authority 
of  the  writers,  but  on  the  use  of  the  Churches.  Those  prayers  had 
their  authors,  who  indeed  were  not  known ;  but,  when  once  it  was 
clear  that  they  had  been  used  in  Mass,  who  their  authora  were 
ceased  to  be  a  question"  {Liturgiae  Orient.,  vol.  I.,  p.  173). 

"  The  existing  manuscripts,"  says  Cardinal  Newman,  "  can 
hardly  be  supposed  to  be  mere  compositions,  but  are  records 
of  Rites." 

I  commend  to  Anglicans  who  speak  so  pathetically  of  the 
Branch  Theory — that  mere  "  Will-o'-the-Wisp  " — the  folloMang 
remark  of  the  Cardinal : 

"That  usage,  which,  after  a  split  has  taken  place  in  a  religious 
communion,  is  found  to  obtain  equally  in  each  of  its  separated 
parts,  may  fairly  be  said  to  have  existed  before  the  split  occurred. 
The  concurrence  of  Orthodox,  Nestorian,  and  Jacobite  in  the  honors 
they  pay  to  the  Blessed  Virgin,  is  an  evidence  that  those  honors 
were  in  their  substance  paid  to  her  in  their  '  Undivided  Church.' " 

The  Vicar  promises  "  to  return  to  the  Liturgies  later  on  "; 
but  wiser  counsels  prevailed,  for  he  declares  in  his  closing 
letter : 

"I  regret,  exceedingly,  as  I  have  said,  that  I  cannot  now  fulfill 


A  llKBUTrER.  398 

my  promise  of  exposing  in  detail  the  ginevous  delusions  under  which 
my  opponent  is  lahorin^  with  regard  to  the  Ancient  Liturgies." 

Hal  Hall  Ha!!!  "  Grievous  delusions,"  indeed !  0!0!! 
Cicero  expressed  his  wonder  how  two  Roman  Augurs  could 
meet  without  laughing  in  each  other's  face.  Perhaps  Bishop 
Kingdon  and  his  Vicar  will  give  us  the  secret — if  they  can 
stand  the  test.  Your  readers  now  see  who  is  the  victim  of  the 
"grievous  delusions."  An  Anglo-Ritualist  had  better  not  refer 
to  the  Eastern  Cburch,  Orthodox  or  Schismatic,  when  looking 
for  arguments  against  the  Western  Church.  Let  him  remem- 
ber the  Rev.  Mr.  Williams'  words  to  Pusey : 

"It  cannot,  I  think,  be  denied  that  the  Orthodox  Greek  Church 
does  even  surpass  the  Church  of  Rome  in  their  exaltation  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  in  their  devotions." 

Ninth  and  Tenth  Letters, — These  will  not « letain  us  long. 
He  proposes  to  consider : 

"Whether  my  opponent  has  produced  satisfactory  evidence  to 
show  that  Gen.  lii.  15,  with  its  corrupt  Ipsa,  is  not  the  text  relied  on 
by  Poman  theologians  as  the  Chief  Scripture  foundation  for  tlie 
dc'gma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary"  ? 

His  argument  in  reply  to  the  question,  is  simply  that  of  his 
first  Strictures  written  backwards,  Hebraically  so  to  speak, 
and  it  is  but  a  re-hash  of  his  audacious,  insolent,  unprincipled, 
mendacious,  and  satanically  malevolent  calumnies,  I  have 
given  your  readers  some  account  of  the  immense  literature  on 
the  gender  of  the  pronoun  in  Gen,  iii,  15 — Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum 
— amongst  Catholic  Theologians ;  I  have  shown  that  they  take 
either  side — I^se,  Ipsum,  or  Ijysa,  without  feeling  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  was  at  all  dependent 
on  either ;  I  have  shown,  moreover,  that  whatever  support  the 
doctrine  has  in  the  text  is  claiined  to  be  drawn  from  the  first 
clause ;  and,  I  have  stated,  over  and  over  again,  in  the  most 
luminous  manner,  the  Catholic  sense  of  Ipsa  as  taught  by  the 
ablest  theologians  in  the  Church,  to  say  nothing  of  the  learned 
Protestants,  Grotius  and  Tischendorf.  Has  the  Vicar  quoted 
one  solitary  dissentient  voice  ?    Not  one  !     Whose  word,  then, 


394  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

will  your  readers  take  on  Catholic  doctrine?  That  of  this 
wretchedly  ignorant  and  insolent  "sacerdotal  pretender," 
backed  up  by  his  Episcopal  godfather,  or  all  the  Theologians 
of  the  Catholic  Church  ? 

For  an  answer  to  his  rubbish  here  on  his  own  quotation  from 
Father  Schouppe,  read  the  fourteenth  letter  of  my  Rejoinder. 

Eleventh  Letter. — Here  he  begs  to  introduce  "another 
small  item  of  considerable  interest  and  importance  "  in  further 
support  of  the  contention  of  his  last  two  letters.  Well,  it  is  a 
"  small  item  "  sure  enough.  For,  it  is  a  criticism  on  the  Bull 
Incffubilis  by  a  so-called  "  prominent  and  eminent  divine  "  of 
the  Russian  Church.  Now,  his  divinity  (save  the  mark  !)  is 
exactly  of  the  same  grade  as  that  of  Bishop  Kiugdon  and  his 
Vicar.  What  do  your  readers  think  the  "criticism"  is? 
Simply  a  repetition  of  the  s^w^f  uttered  by  the  Bishop  and  his 
scribe  on  Ipsa  !  Indeed,  the  Vicar  has  evidently  borrowed 
his  very  words  for  his  own  argument !  And  this  is  the  witness 
"  trotted  out "  to  testify  that  the  Eastern  Church  did  not  be- 
lieve in  the  Immaculate  Conception !  What  disgusting  impu- 
dence ! 

The  Vicar  intimates  that  I  will  "perhaps"  put  "this  vener- 
able, learned,  and  prominent  Russian  divine"  (as  he  calls  him) 
in  the  category  of  "ignoramuses — with  Dr.  Pusey,  Bishop 
Wordsworth,  Bishop  Kingdon,  and  many  others."  Well,  as 
to  their  Lordships  of  Lincoln  and  Fredericton  judged  by  their 
utterances  on  this  question,  I  think  the  "  Russian  divine " 
could  not  be  in  better  company;  and,  not  to  disappoint  the 
Vicar,  or  treat  his  Oriental  friend  inhospitably,  I  impale  him 
with  them.  The  Russian  bear  and  the  British  lion  do  not 
often  so  happily  consort ;  but  now  that  they  are  sans  teeth, 
sans  claws,  sans  everything  save  their  divinity,  they  will  not 
hurt  each  other. 

"  Repentance  is  second  innocence."  I  allow  the  plea  in 
Pusey's  behalf.  I  alleged  that  he,  on  being  instructed  by  Car- 
dinal Newman  and  Bishop  Dupanloup  as  to  its  true  meaning 
as  defined  by  the  Catholic  Church,  did  not  reject  the  doctrine 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception.     I  challenged  the  Vicar  to 


A  Rebutter.  395 

deny  my  assertion ; — he  nevi  /  even  referred  to  my  challenge. 
The  coward  !  He  tried  to  conjure  with  Pusey's  name  and  tlie 
Jirst  volume  of  the  Eirenicon^  but  he  throws  him  overboard  on 
account  of  the  second  volume.     Shame !  shame  I ! 

Now,  what  is  the  truth  about  the  belief  of  the  Eastern 
Church  on  the  Immaculate  Conception  ?  The  belief  exists  to- 
day among  the  Schismatic  Greeks,  and  even  among  those  Ori- 
ental sects  which  have  been  separated  from  the  Church  of 
Christ  from  the  time  of  Nestorius  and  Eutyches.  This  is  clear 
from  the  fact  that  in  1691,  Father  Joseph  Besson,  Superior  of 
the  Society  of  Jesus  in  Syria  and  Persia,  before  three  Patri- 
archs and  an  Archbishop,  in  presence  of  Francois  Baron,  the 
French  Consul,  proved  from  more  than  two  hundred  passages, 
taken  from  the  oldest  liturgical  books,  that  all  the  churches  and 
Oriental  peoples  believed  in  the  preservation  of  Mary  from 
the  stain  of  original  sin.  His  proof  was  openly  and  candidly 
acknowledged  by  the  Prelates  present,  who  signed,  then  and 
there,  the  declaration  that  "  Mary  was  always  free  and  exempt 
from  original  sin,  as  very  many  of  the  ancient  holy  Fathers,  the 
teachers  of  the  Oriental  Church  have  explained."  (See  Gar- 
garin,  L^Eglise  Musse  et  V TmmacuUe  Conception,  Paris,  1876 ; 
Hurter's  Dogmatic  Theology,  Vol.  2,  p.  379.)  Exit  the 
"  learned  divine." 

Under  his  "  fifth  head  "  in  this  letter,  the  Yicai-  returns  to 
the  question  of  the  Invocation  of  Saints.  He  admits  that  the 
practice  arose  early  in  the  Church,  and  has  existed  for  cen- 
turies both  in  her  Eastern  and  AVestern  Branches ;  but  he  says : 

"Careful  study  of  the  whole  question  has  strengthened  my  con- 
viction that  the  Church  of  England  acted  most  wisely  and  ui  strict 
accordance  with  her  truth-loving  character  at  the  Reformation, 
when  she  rejected  in  toto  the  practice  of  invoking  Saints  and 
Angels." 

"The  Church  of  England,"  did  he  say?  This  so-called 
Church  exists  only  in  idea ;  there  is  no  such  a  thing  in  fact. 
The  reality  is  but  a  bundle  of  conflicting  sects  exhibiting  to 
the  world,  at  this  very  moment,  a  horrible  scene  of  discord 
and  confusion.  Dollinger,  one  of  the  Vicar's  pets,  well  de- 
scribes Anglican  doctrines.     They  are,  he  says : 


396  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

"A  collection  of  heterogeneous  theological  propositions  tied  to- 
gether by  the  Act  of  Uniformity;  propositions  which,  in  a  logical 
mind,  cannot  exist  by  the  side  of  one  another,  and  whose  effect 
upon  the  English  churchman  is  that  he  tinds  himself  involved  in 
contradictions  and  disingenuousness,  and  can  only  escape  the  pain- 
ful consciousness  of  it  by  sophistical  reasoning." 

During  this  discussion  the  Yicar  has  used  Dollinger's  name 
against  nie  very  often.  Over  the  fresbly-elosed  grave  of  tliis 
unfortunate  man,  I  do  not  propose  to  utter  a  word  beyond  an 
expression  of  my  sincere  gratitude  for  Lis  intellectual  services 
to  Catholic  truth.  "  I  am  with  that  Dulliuger  wliose  teaching 
in  former  days  tilled  his  disciples  with  love  and  enthusiasm 
for  the  Church  and  the  Holy  See,  but  I  have  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  that  Dul linger  whom  the  enemies  of  the  Church  and 
of  the  Holy  See  load  with  praises."  I  adopt  these  words  of 
the  illustrious  Bishop  Von  Ketteler. 

"  Turn  about  is  fair  play,"  we  are  told.  Let  us  read  Dol- 
linger's judgment  of  this  "  Church  of  England,"  so-called.  I 
quote  from  his  great  work  entitled  "The  Church  and  the 
Churches;  or,  The  Papacy  and  the  Temporal  Power,"  Mc- 
Cabe's  translation : 

"There  is  no  Church  that  is  so  completely  and  thoroughly  as  the 
Anglican,  the  product  and  expression  of  the  wants  and  wishes,  the 
modes  of  thought  and  cast  of  character,  not  of  a  certain  nationality, 
but  of  a  fragment  of  a  nation,  namely,  the  rich,  fashionable,  and 
cultivated  classes.  It  is  the  i*eligion  of  deportment,  of  gentility,  of 
clerical  reserve.  Religion  and  the  Church  are  then  i*equired  to  be 
above  all  things,  not  troublesome,  not  intrusive,  not  presuming,  not 
importunate"  (p.  145). 

"The  laws  from  the  time  of  the  Tudors,  Henry,  Edward,  and 
Elizabeth,  declare  the  Supremacy  over  the  Church  to  be  an  inalien- 
able prerogative  of  the  Crown.  These  statutes  still  exist  in  full 
force.  The  King  or  the  reigning  Queen  is  in  possession  of  the 
Church  ecclesiastical  power,  and  that  of  the  Bishops  is  only  an  ema- 
nation of  the  Royal  authority  "  (p.  155). 

"Besides  the  Ministers  and  the  Parliament,  'the  Privy  Council,' 
since  1833,  exercises  a  supremacy  over  religion  or  the  Church.  It 
was  appointed  by  Parliament  to  be  the  Supreme  Court  of  Appeal  in 


A  Kkbuttee.  897 

ecclesiastical  disputes,  whether  concerning  doctrine  or  discijjline, 
and  cimsists  wholly  or  chiefly  of  laymen,  who  are  in  part  not  even 
members  of  the  Established  Church  "  (p.  150). 

"  "When  about  the  same  time  a  desire  for  a  certain  indei)endent 
Synodical  action  arose,  the  (Loudon)  Times  said  :  '  It  ought  to  be 
considered  that  this  Chui-ch,  to  which  the  Parliament  had  given  its 
present  form,  possesses  every  attribute,  every  advantage,  and  every 
disadvantage  of  a  compromise.  Her  Articles  and  authorized  Fornui- 
laries  are  so  drawn  as  to  admit  within  her  pale,  persons  ditfei-ing 
as  widely  as  it  is  possible  for  the  pi-ofessors  of  the  Christian  i-eligion  to 
dilFcr  from  each  other.  Unity  was  neither  sought  nor  obtained ;  but 
comjH'ehension  was  aimed  at  and  accomplished.  Thei-efore  we  have 
within  the  Church  ol  England  persons  differing  not  merely  in  their 
particular  tenets,  but  in  the  rule  and  ground  of  their  belief '"  tp.  157). 

"The  Bishops  are,  on  the  whole,  powerless  concerning  doctrine 
and  discipline ;  and  for  fear  of  a  long  and  exi^ensive  lawsuit,  they 
seldom  venture  to  proceed  against  a  beneficed  clergyman  "  (p.  157). 

"The  inextricable  contradiction  between  the  Thiity-nine  Articles 
which  are  essentially  Calvinistic,  and  the  sti-ongly  Catholicized 
Liturgj'  originated  in  the  circumstance  of  the  age  of  the  Reforma- 
tion. The  Articles  were  to  be  the  dogmatic  fetters  binding  the 
clergy  to  Calvinism,  and  were  onlj^  laid  before  them  for  signature. 
But  the  Liturgy,  with  its  prayers  and  sacramental  forms,  was  in- 
tended to  prove  to  the  people,  who  were  still  more  Catholic  than 
Protestant,  and  who  had  to  be  threatened  with  pecuniary  fines  be- 
fore they  would  attend  the  service,  that  their  religion  had  not  been 
sensibly  altered,  and  that  the  Old  Catholic  Church  still  really 
existed  "  (p.  159). 

' '  Each  of  the  two  great  parties  in  the  Church  cast  on  each  other 
an  asjiereion  of  hypocrisy  and  disingenuousness  with  equal  right; 
for  the  one  cannot  sign  the  Cahnnistic  Articles  with  inward  convic- 
tion, and  the  other  can  only  accept  the  Liturgy,  for  which  they 
have  an  antipathy,  for  the  sake  of  the  benefits  they  receive,  and 
are  obliged  to  wrest  the  meaning  of  liturgical  forms  in  the  most 
violent  manner"  (p.  160). 

"  It  may  be  said  of  the  English  Church,  that  it  is  like  an  Indian 
idol,  with  many  heads  (and  every  one  with  different  views)  but  very 
few  hands"  (p.  171). 


398  Ii'SK,  Ipsa,  Ii'slm. 

"On  the  whole  the  entire  ex!8t<'nco  of  the  E^tahliahed  Church  is 
seriously  threatened,  and  its  dissolution  only  a  question  of  time.  It 
is  completely  in  the  power  of  the  House  of  Commons  and  of  the 
Cabinet  constituted  by  the  majority  of  that  House,  which  already 
counts  among  its  Tuembers  a  considerable  number  of  Dissenters  who 
are  all  enemies  of  the  State  Chureh,  as  well  as  Catholics,  and  it  is 

noi  necessary  to  mention  the  Jews The  dissolution  of  this 

ill-connected  organism  will  then  follow;  the  profounder  and  more 
earnest  minds  will  withdraw  from  a  Church  in  which  the  double 
yoke  of  governmental  authority  and  compulsory  communion  with 
a  foreign  doctrine,  will  not  allow  them  in  honor  and  conscience  any 
longer  to  remain  "  (p.  173). 

In  the  face  of  this  crushing  indictment  of  the  so-called 
"Church  of  England,"  Low  grim  is  the  hinnor  of  the  Vicar's 
use  of  Dollinger's  name  in  this  controversy !  Mark,  too,  that 
in  these  extracts  he  is  dealing  with  no  debatable  questions 
such  as  led  him  into  revolt  against  the  Church,  whose  authority 
nobody,  more  distinctly  and  emphatically  than  he,  had  pro- 
claimed and  defended.  He  here  states  purely  historico-legal 
])ropositions  which  the  world  knows  to  be  facts.  The  conse- 
quences, too,  which  Dollinger  foresaw  must  inevitably  result 
from  these  facts,  are  in  full  bloojn  in  the  "  Church  of  Eng- 
land "  to-day. 

I  am  now  in  conflict  with  a  representative  of  one  of  those 
sects  which  are  battling  within  the  bosom  of  the  Church  of 
England,  namely.  Ritualism.  Let  me  illustrate  the  truth  of 
Dollinger's  words,  by  giving  your  readers  some  examples  of 
Ritualistic  practice  in  the  Invocation  of  Saints. 

My  first  quotation  will  be  from  one  of  their  books  entitled 
"The  Little  Prayer  Book,"  which  we  are  told  is  intended 
chiefly  for  heyinners  in  Devotion,  and  has  been  revised  and 
corrected  by  three  priests.  "  Beginners  in  devotion^''  mark 
you !  It  contains  instructions  for  Confession,  and  the  Peni- 
tent, when  making  his  Confession  to  the  Priest,  is  instructed 
to  say :  "  I  confess  to  Almighty  God,  to  Blessed  Mary,  to  all 
Saints,  and  to  thee,  my  ghostly  Father,  that  I  have  sinned 
....  wherefore  /  leg  Blessed  Mary,  all  Saints,  and  thee, 
my  ghostly  Father,  to  ^ray  to  the  Lord  our  God  for  meP 
A  Petition  to  be  used  after  Holy  Communion  runs  as  follows : 


A  Ekduitek.  899 

*'  Let  tl»e  glorious  and  ever-Virgin  Mary,  the  Mother  of  God, 
tlie  lilessed  Ai)08tle8,  Martyrs  and  Virgins,  and  all  the  C<nirt 
of  Heaven  make  supplication  unto  Thee  on  our  behalf."  Then 
we  have  Hymns:  "To  the  Holy  Mother  of  God,"  and  she  is 
(ioscrihed  as  "  the  all-holy,  undetiled,  and  more  than  Blessed 
;Mary,  Mother  of  God."  This  book  also  contains  a  hynm,  "  To 
my  Holy  Angel  Guardian,"  in  which  these  verses  occur: 

*'  Then  for  tliy  sake,  dear  Angel,  now, 
More  humble  will  I  be : 
But  I  am  weak  and  wben  I  fall, 
O  weary  not  of  me ! 

*'  Then,  love  me,  love  me,  Angel  dear, 
And  I  will  love  thee  more ; 
And  help  me,  when  my  soul  is  cast 
Upon  the  eternal  shore." 

Again  we  have  another  devotional  book  called  The  English 
Catholic's  Vade  Mecum.  This  contains  Litanies  of  the  Saints 
and  Angels.  I  coiUd  fill  colunms  with  the  same  sort  of  thing 
from  the  most  popular  manuals  of  the  Ritualistic  sect.  I  have 
in  my  Rejoinder  (twenty-seventh  letter),  quoted  from  Little- 
dale's  book — Devotions  to  the  Saints.  I  ask  your  readers  to 
refer  to  the  extracts.  The  book  is  extensively  used  by  Ritual- 
ists to-day.  The  Vicar  says  that  "the  maturer  views"  of 
Littledale  are  not  in  accord  with  those  he  expressed  in  the 
"Preface"  to  this  book,  and  which  I  have  quoted  in  the  lie- 
joinder.  What  a  confession !  What  a  confirmation  of  Bol- 
linger's indictment.  Now  mark.  The  Twenty-second  Article 
of  the  famous  Thirty-nine,  says : 

"  The  Romish  Doctrine  concerning  ....  (the)  Invocation 
of  Saints  is  a  fond  thing  vainly  invented,  and  grounded  upon 
no  warranty  of  Scripture,  but  rather  repugnant  to  the  Word 
of  God." 

Now  at  his  ordination  Littledale  "  signed  "  these  Articles, 
and  made  the  Vicar's  "  priestly  vow  "  to  "  be  ready,  with  all 
faithful  diligence,  to  banish  and  d.  »'e  away  all  erroneous  and 
strange  doctrines  contrary  to  God's  Word."     But  ten  years 


400  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

afterwards,  in  the  face  of  the  above  Article  and  his  "  priestly 
vow  "  to  obey  its  injunctions,  Littledale  publicly  advocates  the 
practice  of  the  Invocation  of  the  Saints,  replies  to  objections 
against  it,  and  proclaims  that  the  Christian  who  neglects  it 
"  fails  to  avail  himself  of  a  privilege."  The  Vicar  now  in- 
forms us  that  his  Master,  and  "  Scholar  "  of  the  ChurcJi  Times 
has  changed  his  "  views."  That  is  it,  precisely.  "  The  Eng- 
lish Church,"  says  Dollinger,  "is  like  an  Indian  idol,  with 
many  heads  (and  every  one  with  different  views)."  To  have 
"^>^V^^J5"  and  to  be  '■^ viewy"  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  An- 
glican teaching ;  and  it  is  a  matter  of  the  very  least  conse- 
quence, whether  the  views  of  to-day  contradict  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles  or  be  in  accord  with  the  views  of  yesterday.  Indeed, 
the  more  widely  the  views  of  a  Parson  differ  from  each  other, 
from  day  to  day,  the  better — since  he  thereby  exhibits  to  per- 
fection that  vieioiness  which  is  the  leading  feature  of  Anglican 
theology.  Littledale's  vagaries  on  the  Invocation  of  Saints 
illustrate  this  to  a  nicety.  When  he  "  signed "  the  Articles 
and  made  his  "  priestly  vows  "  he  had  one  set  of  views ;  when 
he  wrote  the  "  Preface  "  to  the  book  entitled  "  Devotions  for 
the  Communion  of  Saints,"  he  had  another  set ;  and  now  the 
Yicar  announces  that  he  has  still  another  1  "  Comprehension 
was  aimed  at  and  accomplished "  in  the  Church  of  England, 
say  the  London  Times  and  Dollinger.     I  should  think  so. 

And  now  let  me  call  attention,  on  the  same  subject,  to  the 
Treasury  of  Derotion^  a  popular  book  with  Ritualists  in  this 
Province — yes,  in  the  "  Mission  Church  "  in  this  very  city. 
It  is  pirated  almost  verhatim  from  our  prayer  books,  especially 
from  our  Golden  Manual.  It  has  prayers  for  the  intercession 
of  Saints  and  Angels.     Here  is  one : 

"  May  the  intercessions  of  the  holy  Mother  of  God,  of  the  Proph- 
ets, of  the  holy  Apostles,  of  tlie  Martyrs,  help  me!  May  all  the 
Saints  and  Elect  of  God  pray  for  me,  that  I  may  be  worthy  with 
them  to  possess  the  Kingdom  of  God.    Amen." 

And  again : 

"  May  the  holy  Angels,  especially  my  own  Guardian,  keep  watch 
around  me  throughout  this  night,  to  protect  me  against  the  assaults 


A  Rebutter.  401 

of  the  evil  one,  to  suggest  to  me  holy  thoughts,  to  defend  me  against 
all  dangers,  to  lead  me  in  the  perfect  way  of  peace,  and  to  bring  me 
safe  at  length,  to  my  home  in  Heaven.    Amen." 

And  again,  in  the  prayers  for  the  Dead  (when  the  soul  has 
departed) : 

"  May  the  Holy  Ones  of  God  succor  him ;  may  the  Angels  of  God 
receive  and  bear  his  soul  and  present  it  before  the  Face  of  the  Most 
High. 

V.  May  Christ,  Who  has  called  thee,  receive  thee  ;  may  the 
Angels  carry  thee  into  Abraham's  bosom. 

R.  Receive  his  soul,  and  present  it  before  the  Face  of  the  Most 
High  ! 

V.  Grant  him  eternal  rest,  O  Lord ;  and  let  perpetual  light  shine 
upon  him. 

R.  May  the  Angels  of  God  receive  and  bear  his  soul,  and  present 
it  before  the  Face  of  the  Most  High. 

"  This  is  '  comprecation '  only,  which,  notwithstanding  my 
change  of  view,  I  still  think  quite  defensible,"  exclaims  Little- 
dale,  as  quoted  by  the  Vicar.  Rubbish !  The  distinction  is  as 
obsolete  as  the  word.  Here  we  have  a  sample  of  "  Jesuitical ' 
jugglery  in  true  ritualistic  style.    Is  it  not  benesith  contempt  ? 

I  have  said  that  the  Treasury  of  Devotion  was  a  "  crib  " — 
especially  from  our  Golden  Manual.  Let  me  give  your  re^\- 
ers  an  opportunity  Ix)  test  my  statement,  in  the  above  pray^/s 
for  the  Dead.     Here  is  the  language  of  the  Golden  Maiiual : 

"Come  to  his  assistance,  ye  Saints  of  God;  come  forth  to  meet 
him,  ye  Angels  of  the  Loi-d,  receiving  his  soul,  offering  it  in  the  sight 
of  the  Most  High. 

V.  May  Christ  receive  thee.  Who  hath  called  thee,  and  may  the 
Angels  conduct  thee  to  Abraham's  bosom. 

R.  Receiving  his  soul,  offering  it  in  the  sight  of  the  Most  High. 

V.  Eternal  rest  give  unto  him,  O  Lord,  and  let  perpetual  light 
shine  upon  him. 

R.  Offering  it  in  the  sight  of  the  Most  High. 

What  do  your  readers  think  of  that  ?  Tlie  simple  fact  is 
that  the  "Priest,"  who  "compiled"  the  Treasury,  gives  a 
slightly  different  English  translation  of  the  Latin  of  the  Golden 
Manual  from  that  which  the  Golden  Manual  itself  has.     That 


402  Ipsk,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

is  absolutely  the  only  difference.    I  see  no  room  for  choice 
between  them.     But  now  for  the  joke  of  this  farce. 

The  "Priest "who  "compiled  "the  Treasury  "desires  to 
withhold  his  name,"  and  the  book  is  edited  by  the  Rev. 
"  Father "(!)  Carter,  one  of  the  most  notorious  Ritualists  in 
England.  In  the  Preface  to  the  "  third  edition  "  of  the  book 
Carter  says ; 

"In  preparing  the  Treasury  the  desire  was  to  supply  a  body  of 
devotions  in  faithful  accordance  with  the  truest  standards  of  the 
mind  of  the  Church  of  En .^land,  and,  in  trust  that  this  rule  had 
been  observed,  it  was  thought  better  to  commit  the  book  to  the  test 
of  general  approval  rather  than  seek  any  authoritative  sanction  to 
its  contents." 

"  The  truest  standards  of  the  mind  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land," according  to  the  Ritualist  Carter,  are  to  be  found  in 
Catholic  Prayer  Books — and  in  the  shape  of  prayers  invocatory 
of  the  Saints  and  Angels,  and  for  the  Dead,  both  of  which  are 
condemned  by  the  Twenty-second  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  1 
Do  your  readers  wonder  that  "  it  was  thought  better  "  not  to 
"  seek  any  authoritative  sanction  "  for  the  Treasury  f  Im- 
agine the  Rectors  of  the  "  Stone  Church  "  and  of  "  Trinity," 
in  this  city,  reciting  from  the  Treasury  its  prayers  for  the 
Dead  over  the  remains  of  some  deceased  member  of  their  con- 
gregation !  I  do  believe  that  so  far  as  the  late  lamented  mem- 
ber was  concerned,  it  would  prove  to  be  but  a  case  of  sus- 
j^ended  animation. 

In  the  face  of  all  this,  need  I  weary  your  readers  with 
another  word  on  tha  in-toto  rejection  by  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, of  the  Invocation  of  Saints?  The  practice  is  spreading 
every  day  in  spite  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles — and  the  Ritu- 
alists deserve  all  the  credit  for  it.  And  yet  these  hypocriti- 
cal pseudo-"  priests  "  daily  insult  their  Teacher — the  Catholic 
Church,  the  True  Witness  who  has  been  teaching  for  nearly 
two  thousand  years  the  very  truths  which  they  have  been  re- 
hearsing for  about  twenty^  which  they  learned  by  listening  out- 
side her  door,  and  but  for  her  would  never  have  learned  at  all. 

Twelfth  Letteb. — The  same  subject  is  continued  in  this 


A  Rebutter.  403 

letter  without  a  particle  of  argument  not  fully  answered  in  my 
Hcjoinder. 

Thirteenth  Letter. — The  best  thing  in  tliis  is  a  sort  of  In- 
dex to  the  information  given  him  in  my  Rejoinder.  Tlianks  1 
The  balance  of  it  is  a  long  quotation  from  Cardinal  N^ewman's 
"  Letter  to  Pusey,"  which  I  have  already  fully  discussed.  Tlie 
closing  words  are:  "They  seem  to  me  like  a  bad  dream." 
This,  too,  I  have  explained  in  the  twenty-fifth  letter  of  my 
Bejoinder. 

Fourteenth,  Fifteenth,  and  Sixteenth  LEriERS. — I  am 
here  reminded  that  "  the  way  of  him  that  is  laden  with  guilt  is 
exceedingly  crooked."  He  continues  to  repeat  in  these  letters 
all  maimer  of  rubbish  on  tlie  Invocation  of  Saints,  St.  Liguori, 
and  the  Haccolta.  Evidently, "  this  way  madness  lies."  What, 
I  ask  your  honest  readers,  what  is  the  use  of  it  all,  in  the  face 
of  the  very  full  explanation  I  have  given  of  Catholic  doctrine, 
and  in  the  face  of  the  quotations  I  have  made  from  Bitualistic 
books  of  devotion  ?  Ritualistic  practice  admits  our  principle, 
and  no  amount  of  such  stuff  as  we  have  here  can  avail  with 
honest  men. 

He  has,  however,  dared  to  accuse  me  of  garbling.  As  usual, 
the  accusation  is  the  offspring  of  his  malice,  and  a  deliberate 
attempt  to  misrepresent.  Now,  mark.  In  the  eighteenth  let- 
ter of  the  Rejoinder  I  was  not  discussing  the  Invocation  of 
Saints,  and  therefore  did  not  even  refer  to  it.  I  was  engaged 
in  showing  the  homage  the  AVorld  paid  to  the  great  maternal 
sanctity  of  the  ever-blessed  Mother.  I  alleged  that  only  the 
Ritualist  controversialist  of  the  Littledale  stripe  is  bettor  when 
he  treats  of  Her.  To  prove  this  assertion,  I  gave  selections 
from  the  writings  of  Bishops  Hall,  Pearson,  and  Ilioks,  and 
from  those  of  George  Herbert,  Keble,  and  Frank — "a  few 
choice  minds  in  Anglicanism,"  but  I  took  care  to  jKjint  out 
that  their  thoughts  were  not  Anglican  thoughts  ;  their  truo 
home  was  the  Catholic  Church.  And  now  the  Yicar  accuses 
me  of  '"garbling,"  because  having  called  these  writers  as  wit- 
nesses to  one  point,  I  did  not  also  offer  their  evidence  on  an- 


404  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

other  point  absolutely  alien  to  the  question  in  hand.  What  a 
mud-head !  This  explains  very  clearly  the  disf^raeeful  confu- 
sion, and  the  utter  lack  of  logical  argument  that  characterizes 
the  Strictures. 

Again  he  returns  to  St.  Liguori's  Glories  of  Mary  and  the 
Raccolta.    He  says : 

"These  devotional  books,  we  know(!)  abound  in  direct  appeals 
to  the  Virgin  for  every  kind  of  gift,  temporal  and  eternal." 

Xow,  if  he  means  by  this  to  assert  that  these  books  either 
encourage  or  authorize  Catholics  to  suppose  that  our  Blessed 
Lady  has  power  in  herself  to  bestow  spiritual  gifts  or  temporal 
gifts  either,  then  it  is  a  calumny  either  very  criminal  in  its 
ignorance  or  quite  characteristically  satanic  in  its  malevolence. 
From  my  knowledge  of  the  debauched  state  of  the  man's 
mind,  I  believe  it  to  be  both.  For  we  Catholics  know,  on  the 
contrary,  that  there  is  not  even  the  most  superficial  appear- 
ance of  sucii  a  result  ensuing.  Indeed,  the  very  cause  of  that 
spiritual  attraction  which  devotion  to  Mary  possesses  for  the 
great  body  of  Catholics,  is  their  regarding  her  as  a  fellow- 
creature, — else,  I  admit,  it  would  be  absolutely  indefensible. 

But  if  he  means  to  assert  that  these  books  encourage  a  reli- 
ance on  the  intercession  of  the  Mother  of  Jesus  with  her  Ador- 
able Son  to  obtain  from  Him  spiritual  and  temiporal  gifts  for 
those  who  strive  to  imitate  her  virtues — then,  well  may  I  ask 
him,  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul :  "  Did  (this)  Word  of  God  come 
out  from  you  or  came  it  only  to  you?"  For  once  he  is  in 
accord  with  Holy  Scripture,  and  I  felicitate  him  on  his  blun- 
der: he  never  meant  it. 

Does  the  Bible  encourage  this  reliance  ?  First,  as  to  spiritual 
gifts.  Why,  the  very  first  nn'racle  wrought  by  our  Divine 
Saviour  was  in  the  spiritual  or  supernatural  order,  and  it  was 
wrought  through  His  Blessed  Mother's  mediation.  The  mys- 
tery of  the  Incarnation  had  no  sooner  been  accomplished  in 
Mary,  than  she  rose  up  and  went  into  the  hill  country  "  with 
haste,"  to  visit  her  cousin  Elizabeth.  What  was  the  result  of 
the  interview  between  these  two  higlily-favored  women  ?  More 
stupendous  than  the  creation  of  worlds.    "  And  it  came  to  pass 


A  Eebcttek.  405 

that  when  Elizabeth  heard  the  sahitation  of  Mary,  the  iufant 
leaped  in  her  womb."  I^ow  the  Catholic  belief,  in  which 
Pusey  heartily  concurred,  is  that  John  the  Bai)tist  was  sancti- 
fied, was  cleansed  from  original  sin,  at  the  moment  when  he 
*'  leaped "  in  Elizabeth's  bosom ;  and  the  precise  moment 
chosen  for  its  accomplishment  was  when  the  voice  of  Mary's 
'  greeting  sounded  in  Elizabeth's  ears.  For  Christ  tlien  spoke 
by  the  mouth  of  His  Mother,  and  John  heard  by  the  ears  of 
Elizabeth.  No  sooner  has  Mary  spoken  than  Elizabeth 
"  was  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  she  cried  out  with  a  loud 
voice  and  said :  Blessed  art  thou  amongst  women  and  blessed 
is  the  fruit  of  thy  womb.  And  whence  is  this  to  me  that  the 
Mother  of  my  Lord  should  visit  me  ?  For  behold,  as  soon  as 
the  voice  of  thy  salutation  sounded  in  my  ears,  the  infant  iu 
my  womb  leaped  for  joy  T 

"  And  whence  is  this  to  me  that  the  Mother  of  my  Lord 
should  visit  me  ? "  What  a  marvellous  speech !  The  very  God 
Incarnate  was  also  present  at  the  very  same  moment ;  and  yet 
Elizabeth  speaks  explicitly,  not  of  His  visit,  but  of  His 
Mother's !  Mary  is  now  the  Temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  filled 
with  His  presence,  so  that  it  overflows  all  around.  She  had 
told  nothing  to  Elizabeth,  but  the  very  voice  of  her  sahitation 
has  sufficed.  I  do  not  at  all  attempt  to  draw  out  the  awful 
significance  of  the  simple  Gospel  recital,  or  to  voice  the  soul, 
stirring,  heart-piercing,  reason-bewildering  reflections  suggested 
by  it.  Able  hands  and  loving  Catholic  hearts  have  done  all 
that,  and  I  need  not  intrude. 

Now,  will  the  Vicar  deny  that  in  this  instance  Mary  was  the 
medium  of  spiritual  gifts  and  graces  to  St.  John  the  Baptist  ? 
Yes,  he  would  give  the  lie  to  God  Himself,  as  lie  has  done 
before,  to  score  a  point  against  Rome. 

And  second,  as  to  temporal  gifts.  Here  again  the  very  first 
jyvhlic  miracle  performed  by  our  Blessed  Lord  was  in  the  tem- 
poral or  physical  order,  ajid  it,  too,  was  performed  at  Cana 
through  Mary's  intercession.  "  Tliey  have  no  loine.''^  How 
exquisitely  tender  is  the  thoughtfulness  implied  in  these  few 
and  simple  words  !  The  heart  of  the  woman  and  the  mother 
speaks.     "They  have  no  wine," — that  seems  to  us  but  a  trifling 


406  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

matter,  only  a  qiieBtioii  of  a  little  chagrin  and  annoyance  to 
the  hosts  and  young  married  folks,  and  not  an  occasion  of  suf- 
ficient solemnity  for  the  first  display  of  Christ's  Divine  Power. 
But  Mary,  full  of  tenderness  for  the  natural  feelings  of  her 
friends,  feels  for  their  emharrassment,  and  unHollcited  interests 
herself  for  their  relief.  She  has  perfect  faith  and  confidence 
both  in  the  power  and  in  the  goodness  of  her  Divine  Son.  She 
does  not  command,  she  does  not  even  ask.  She  confines  her- 
self to  the  most  simple  statement  of  their  wants.  "  They  have 
no  wine" — she  whispered  to  Him  whose  creative  j^'a^  first 
broke  the  silence  of  eternity,  and  rather  than  reject  a  mother's 
prayer.  He  anticipated  the  eternal  decrees : 

The  modest  water  saw  its  God — and  blushed  ! 
Nympha  pudica  Deum  vidit  et  erubuit. 

Will  the  Vicar  deny  that  in  "this  beginning  of  miracles" 
there  is  any  evidence  of  the  power  of  Mary's  influence  with 
her  Divine  Son  ?  And  will  he  also  deny  that  there  is  anything 
to  encourage  us  to  have  recourse  to  her  intercession  for  even 
temporal  gifts? 

Tlie  Son  of  God  in  His  Sacred  Humanity,  not,  of  course,  in 
His  Divine  Nature,  nor  in  any  matter  which  is  proj^er  to  Him 
only  in  that  nature,  was  subject  to  Mary  here,  and  obeyed  her 
(St.  Luke  ii.  51);  and  as  the  two  natures  remain  in  Him  for- 
ever distinct,  two  natures  in  one  person,  I  know  no  reason  for 
supposing  that  the  relation,  and  whatever  jiertains  essentially 
to  it,  between  the  Mother  and  the  Sou  in  His  human  nature, 
are  not  precisely,  save  that  both  are  now  in  a  glorified  state, 
what  they  were  when  on  earth.  "We  are  not  to  suppose  the 
soul  loses  in  the  future  life  the  habits  of  this,  and  therefore  we 
must  suppose  that  the  habit  of  obedience,  love,  and  reverence 
of  our  Divine  Lord  to  His  holy  Mother  here  are  still  retaine<l. 
Therefore,  we  conclude  surely  that  her  will,  always  one  with 
God's  will,  because  moved  by  the  Divine  charity,  is  still  re- 
garded by  Him  as  the  will  of  His  Mother,  and  has  that  weight 
with  Him  that  the  right  will  of  a  mother  nmst  always  have 
with  a  good,  loving  son. 

Since,  then, /or  her  sake,  at  the  wedding  at  Cana  He  even 


A  Rebutter.  407 

anticipated  the  hour  He  Lad  resolved  upon  for  the  manifesta- 
tion of  His  own  glory,  what  may  we  not  expect  that  He  will 
do  for  her  when  the  hour  of  glorifying  her  throughout  all  the 
the  earth  is  come  ? 

In  the  twenty-third  letter  of  the  Rejoinder^  I  drew  out  a 
parallel  between  those  objections  which  the  Protestant  is  so 
fond  of  adducing  against  the  Catholic  veneration  of  Mary,  and 
those  which  a  Unitarian  might  allege  against  the  worship  of 
Jesus  Christ.  Now,  of  course,  every  believer  in  the  Trinity  who 
has  practiced  the  worship  of  the  God-Man,  knows  experiment- 
ally that  there  lurks  a  monstrous  fallacy  in  the  Unitarian's 
argument.  But,  then,  in  like  manner,  every  Catholic  who  has 
practiced  devotion  to  our  Blessed  Lady,  knows  experimentally 
that  there  lurks  a  monstrous  fallacy  in  the  Protestant'' s  argu- 
ment. Referring  to  this  parallel,  the  Vicar  makes  this  cow- 
ardly statement : 

'*  His  long  and  flimsy  argument  in  the  person  of  an  Unitarian, 
claims  no  remarks.  Any  tyro  m  a  diviuity  scliool  could  as  easily 
as  my  opponent  '  draw  out  an  overwhelming  Trinitarian  answer. ' " 

Indeed !  But  this  Ritualistic  "  tyro  "  does  not  attempt  it.  O, 
no!  Something  more  than  a  supply  of  divinity  "scraps  "  is 
required  to  meet  the  Unitarian's  objection.  Let  me,  then,  as- 
sure Bishop  Kingdon  that,  -when  he  puts  forward  a  "  tyro " 
competent  to  give  an  unanswerable  reply  to  the  Unitarian,  I 
will  be  on  hand  to  give  a  reply,  equally  unanswerable,  to  those 
objections  urged  by  Protestants  against  the  Catholic's  devotion 
to  '•  Mary  the  Mother  of  Jesus." 

One  word  more  on  these  Letters.  Bishop  Colenso,  Pusey's 
"heathen,"  but  a  Jiame  of  far  greater  authority  in  the  Angli- 
can Church  than  that  of  Bishop  Kingdon  will  ever  be,  in 
writing  to  the  London  Times,  quoted  eleven  texts  of  Scrii)ture 
to  prove  that  prayer  ought  not  to  be  offered  to  our  Blessed 
Lord.  Again :  all  the  world  still  remembers  the  No-Popery 
frenzy  that  broke  out  in  England  M'lien  Pius  IX.  re-established 
there  the  Catholic  Hierarchy.  On  that  occasion  the  mob, 
feeling  by  a  true  instinct  that  it  could  do  nothing  else  so  pain- 
ful to  all  Catholics,  proceeded  publicly  to  burn  in  ^'(^^y  the 


408  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsijm. 

ever  Blessed  Mother  of  their  Saviour,  and  (who  can  write  it 
without  a  shudder !)  even  our  Divine  and  Crucified  Redeemer. 
They  knew  not  what  they  did.  The  insult  was  intended,  not 
for  Him,  but  for  CathoHcs.  Who  was  the  more  consistent — 
the  Enghsh  mob,  or  Pusey's  Episcopal  "  heathen  "  ? 

Seventeenth  Letter. — The  object  of  this  letter  is,  to  cover 
up  the  infamy  that  attaches  to  his  publication  of  the  forged 
speech  of  Bishop  Strossmayer,  in  the  columns  of  the  CJmrch 
EclectiG.  He  manages  to  repeat,  over  and  over  again,  the 
rubbish  of  the  anonymous  scribblers  and  defamers — Janus, 
Quirinus,  and  Pomponio  Leto.  This  sort  of  evidence  is  the 
very  life-blood  of  the  Ritualist  brain.  Happily,  now-a-days.  in- 
telligent men  do  not  form  their  judgments  on  such  authority. 

He  adduces,  too,  a  private  letter  to  support  a  contemptible 
calumny  on  the  memory  of  the  honored  dead — His  Grace,  the 
late  Archbishop  Connolly.  This  was  so  effectively  disposed  of 
at  the  time  by  His  Lordship,  Bishop  Rogers  of  Chatham,  that 
I  give  his  letter  in  the  Appendix  A. 

Now,  his  conduct  in  regard  to  the  forged  speech  of  Bishop 
Strossmayer  is  simply  %ale.  In  one  breath  he  admits  its  spuri- 
ousness,  in  another  he  asserts  that  substantially  it  came  ''  from 
the  lips  of  the  eminent  Croation  Bishop  himself."  And  yet 
he  wriggles  and  squirms ;  but  he  winds  up  by  rebaptizing  his 
own  monstrosity  with  Ritualistic  "  bell,  book,  and  candle,"  and 
says : 

"  I  shall  be  glad  to  forward  a  copy  of  it  to  any  person  who 
will  send  me  a  stamped  and  addressed  envelope  and  a  two-cent 
stamp."  What  impious  malignity  and  mendacity!  Only 
shortly  before  he  had  told  your  readers,  that  some  anonymous 
donor  had  sent  him  a  copy.  Now  he  confesses  that  he  has  a 
stock  on  hand,  and  is  only  intent  on  recouping  his  loss  on  a 
bad  investment.  The  "  copy  "  he  advertises,  is  published  at 
"  one-halfpenny,^''  and  he  says  nothing  to  his  prospective  cus- 
tomers about  the  discount,  which  the  pamphlet  announces  will 
be  allowed  to  persons  purchasing  "quantities  for  gratuitous 
distribution."  That  is  hardly  fair ;  but  I  will  be  satisfied  if 
he  infonn  the  public,  through  your  columns,  that  he  has  ex- 


A  Rebuttkr.  409 

pended  the  profits  of  tlie  transaction  in  "evangelizing  the 
heatlien" — tliat  is  to  say,  in  spreading  genuine  Iiitiialistic 
l^rinciples  and  practices,  among  the  Rectors  of  the  Anglican 
Churches  and  their  congregations  in  this  city,  who  now  so 
cordially  anathematize  him  and  liitualism. 

Let  us  now  hope,  however,  that  this  cowardly  libel  on  the 
*  venerated  Bishop  Strossmayer  is  at  an  end.  Since  I  finished 
my  Rejoinder,  the  Bishop  has  written  a  letter  anent  this  for- 
gery to  Bishop  Maes,  of  Covington,  Kentucky,  who  Lad  sent 
him  the  "  famous  speech."  I  give  it  in  the  Aj^jpendix  B. 
Comment  is  needless. 

There  is  a  wondrous  law  of  compensation  running  through 
human  existence.  The  unfortunate  Pigott,  when  caught  in  a 
like  infamy  with  that  of  the  Vicar,  paid  the  penalty  of  out- 
raged truth  with  his  life,  and  like  another  Judas,  "  went  out " 
and  blew  out  his  miserable  and  mischievous  brains.  How  does 
the  Vicar  propose  to  atone  for  his  crime  ? 

Eighteenth  Letter. — Here  he  returns  once  more  to  the 
imhappy  Littledale  and  his  Plain  Reasons,  the  Vicar's  theo- 
logical text-book  and  vade  tnecxim.  It  need  not  detain  us  long. 
I  alleged  that  it  had  been  "  kicked  out "  by  the  "  Protestant 
Defence  Association."  This  is  tnie,  and  the  Vicar  has  not 
dared  to  deny  it.  I  also  referred  shortly  to  the  arraignment  of 
the  book  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Lee,  an  Anglican  clergyman.  For 
the  sake  of  the  numerous  Protestant  witnesses  I  give  his  letter 
in  the  Appendix  C.  Father  Ryder's  Catholic  Cojitroversy  is 
an  answer  in  detail  to  the  Plain  Reasons. 

Nineteenth  Letter. — Here  again  he  displays  the  most 
shocking  malice  and  bewildering  ignorance  in  what  he  asserts 
"  concerning  the  presence  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  in  the  Euchar- 
ist," as  he  expresses  it.  Let  your  readers  turn  to  the  twenty- 
sixth  letter  of  the  Rejoinder  for  a  full  and  clear  answer  to  his 
stupid  calumnies  here.  His  "  opponent's  edition  of  it "  can, 
and  will  be  accepted  by  all  honest  men,  who  value  truth  and 
desire  to  learn  the  true  Catholic  teaching. 

I  beg,  however,  to  ask  thoughtful  attention  to  some  other 


410  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ii-sim. 

remarks  here.  In  the  opening  letter  of  his  first  Strictures,  he 
proelaiined  tliat  he  was  bound  hy  his  "  priestly  vow  "  to  "  be 
ready  with  all  faithful  diligence,  to  banish  and  drive  away  all 
erroneous  and  sti'ange  doctrines  contrary  to  God's  Word.'' 
Let  us  see  how  he  has  kept  the  "  vow.'' 
He  writes  as  follows : 

"The  next  exagj^eration  to  be  exposed  is  based  upon  the  unwar- 
rantable assumption  tbat  tlie  Blessed  Virgin  bad  full  knowledge  of 
all  tbat  was  inii)]ied  in  Gabriel's  message;  tbat  she  fully  realized 
that  she  bore  in  lier  body  a  Divine  Person." 

That  is,  if  lie  knows  what  he  says,  he  denies  that  Mary 
realized  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation  wrought  in  her  by  the 
power  and  operation  of  the  Holy  (Ihost.  What  more  could 
an  avowed  athois-t  say  ^  Did  Pusey's  Episcopal  "heathen," 
Colenso,  ever  utter  a  blasphemy  more  contrary  to  "God's 
Word  "  i 

Let  us  consider,  then,  for  a  moment  the  tremendously  awful 
interview  between  the  Archangelic  messenger  and  Mary,  set 
down  from  Mary's  own  lips  in  St.  Luke's  Gospel.  God's 
envoy  unfolds  to  her  in  detail  the  Royal  secret  with  which  he 
had  been  entrusted : 

"  Behold  thou  shalt  conceive  in  thy  womb,  and  shalt  bring  forth 
a  Son ;  and  tliou  slialt  call  His  name  Jesus. 

"He  shall  be  great,  and  shall  be  called  the  Son  of  the  Most  High : 
and  the  Lord  God  shall  give  unto  Him  the  throne  of  David  His 
father:  and  He  shall  reign  in  the  house  of  Jacob  forever, 

"  And  of  His  Kingdom  there  shall  be  no  end. 

"And  Mary  said  to  the  Angel:  How  shall  this  be  done,  because 
I  know  not  man? 

"And  the  Angel  answering  said  to  her:  The  Holy  Ghost  shall 
come  upon  thee;  and  the  power  of  the  Most  High  shall  ovei-sbadow 
thee.  And  therefore  also  the  Holy  which  shall  be  born  of  thee, 
shall  be  called  the  Son  of  God. 

"And  Mary  said:  Behold  the  handmaid  of  the  Lord:  be  it  done 
unto  me  accoi'ding  to  thy  word." 

But  the  Yicar  asserts  that  Mary  did  not  "  fully  realize  "  the 
consequences  of  the  consent  thus  given !  Well,  consider  again, 
Mary's  visit  to  Elizabeth  : 


A  Rebctter,  411 

"And  (Mary)  entered  into  tlie  house  of  Zachary,  and  salutod 
Elizabeth. 

"And  it  came  to  pass,  that  when  Elizabeth  heard  tlie  sahitation 
of  Mary,  the  infant  leaped  iu  her  womb:  and  Elizabeth  was  filled 
with  the  Holy  Ghost : 

"And  she  cried  out  with  a  loud  voice,  and  said:  Blessed  art  thou 
amon^  women ;  and  blessed  is  the  fruit  of  thy  womb. 

"And  whence  is  this  to  me,  that  the  mother  of  my  Lord  should 
come  to  me? 

"For  behold,  as  soon  as  the  voice  of  thy  salutation  sounded  in 
my  ears,  the  infant  in  my  womb  leaped  for  joy. 

"And  blessed  art  thou  that  hast  believed;  because  those  things 
shall  be  accomplished  that  were  spoken  to  thee  by  the  Loixl." 

Kow  Mary  had  not  disclosecl  her  mighty  secret  even  to  tins 
Baint,  her  cousin.  But  Elizabeth  "  was  tilled  with  the  Holy 
Ghost,"  and  by  His  infused  light  she  understood  the  niysteiy 
of  the  Incarnation  which  God  had  wrought  in  Mary.  In 
raptures  of  delight  and  astonishment,  Elizabeth  pronounced 
her  blessed  above  all  other  women,  because  she  was  made  by 
God  the  instrument  of  His  blessing  to  the  world,  and  of  re- 
moving the  malediction  which  through  Eve  had  been  entailed 
on  mankind.  But  the  "  fruit  of  her  womb  "  Elizabeth  called 
blessed  in  a  sense  still  infinitely  higher,  because  He  was  the 
boundless  source  of  all  the  graces,  by  wlioi'^  only  Mary  herself 
was  blessed.  Tiien  Elizabeth,  turning  her  eyes  upon  herself, 
cried  out —  Wlience  is  this  to  me  that  the  Mother  of  my  Lord 
should  visit  me  ?  She  calls  the  Child  of  Mary  her  Lord,  sig- 
nifying that  she  knew  He  was  God ;  and  she  declares  herself 
honored  far  above  her  deserts,  to  have  received  the  visit  of  the 
Mother  of  God.  She  herself  liad  conceived  one  greater  than 
the  prophets,  but  Mary  held  in  her  bosom  the  eternal  Son  of 
God,  Himself  true  God.  But  bound  by  his  "  priestly  vow  " 
the  Vicar  denies  that  Mary  "  fully  realized  "  what  Elizabeth 
by  the  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  here  proclaims  "  with  a 
loud  voice  " — so  that  even  he  might  hear. 

What,  again,  shall  I  say  of  the  2La<jnificat — that  proplietic 
announcement  of  the  glory  of  Christ  and  His  Mother  ?  It  is 
not  for  me,  in  this  place,  to  draw  out  the  sublime  reflections 
it  suggests  to  the  Catholic  heart.     For  my  present  purpose  it 


412  Ipse,  Ii'sa,  Ipsum. 

is  eiiongli  simply  to  read  it :  "  And  Mary  said :  My  soul  doth 
magnify  tlie  Lord :  and  n)y  spirit  hatli  rejoiced  in  God  my 
Saviour."  "//i  God  my  Saviour,^''  sings  Mary.  "  That  is  an 
exaggeration" — cries  the  Vicar, — "she  did  not  'fully  realize' 
what  she  was  saying!  "  "  Behold  from  henceforth  all  genera- 
tions shall  call  mo  blessed.  Because  He  that  is  mighty  hath 
done  great  things  to  me :  and  holy  is  His  name  " — proclaims 
Mary.  "That  is  another  mistake" — cries  the  Vicar, — "she 
had  no  idea  what  the  '  great  things '  were  which  the  Almighty 
had  done  to  her."  Could  any  ^tie  have  imagined  beforehand 
that  a  professed  believer  in  Christianity  would  make  so  wild  an 
assertion  as  that  which  I  have  here  been  considering? 

Beyond  the  above  suggestions,  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss, 
at  this  stage,  Mary's  place  according  to  the  Gospels.  My  chal- 
lenge on  that  subject  still  stands.  But  do  Protestants  ever 
reflect  on  the  importance  of  her  testimony  as  a  witness  to  the 
Gospel  ?  The  grand  mystery  of  our  Faith  is  the  Incarnation 
of  the  Word  of  God.  In  the  Divinity  of  Christ  the  whole  of 
Christianity  is  summed  up,  and  it  is  but  an  empty  sound — for 
Redemption  vanishes  away,  the  Cross  falls — if  the  Crucified 
was  not  God. 

Now,  it  has  pleased  God  that  there  should  be  but  one  wit- 
ness to  the  truth  of  this  fundamental  mystery,  upon  which  the 
whole  doctrine  of  the  Apostles  hangs ;  that  one  person  only 
should  be  our  guarantee  with  regard  to  those  details  which 
chiefly  characterize  the  Incarnation, — and  this  sole  witness, 
this  one  guarantee  of  our  Faith,  is  Mary  of  Nazareth.  This 
fact  is  indisputable.  She  was  alone  with  the  Angel  when  the 
great  mystery  was  announced  and  accomplished.  It  was  from 
her  only  that  the  Apostles  could  receive  the  knowledge  of  it, 
and  transmit  that  knowledge  to  us.  And  if,  says  St.  Ambrose, 
St.  John  speaks  more  clearly,  and  after  a  more  sublime  man- 
ner than  the  rest,  of  the  mysteries  of  the  Incarnate  Word,  it  is 
because  he  was  more  closely  connected  with  her  who  was  the 
very  Temple  in  which  those  heavenly  mysteries  were  accom- 
plished. God,  moreover,  chose  that  Mary  should  be  the  faith- 
ful and  mute  depositary  of  this  mystery  during  the  whole  time 
of  her  Son's  life  upon  earth ;  He  chose  that  she  should  keep 


A  Kebutter.  413 

tlie  secret  inviolable  during  all  these  years.  The  Heavens, 
Angels,  and  the  very  stars  will  proclaim  His  Birth  and  Ills 
glory.  Prophets  and  Saints  will  receive  Him  in  His  Temi)]e ; 
the  Apostles  and  great  wonders  on  earth  and  in  heaven  will 
herald  His  work  to  the  very  ends  of  the  world.  All  the 
mighty  ones  of  the  earth,  all  the  saints,  wise  men  and  kings, 
all  peoples  will  acknowledge  Him  and  pay  homage  to  His 
power.  And  all  this  Matnf  knew.  The  Angel  had  an- 
nounced it  to  her,  and  presently  after,  in  the  Magnificat,  the 
Holy  Ghost  inspired  her  with  words  of  prophecy  which  allude 
to  her  secret  but  do  not  betray  it.  Even  Calvin  admits  all  this. 
He  says : 

"God  chose  that  the  treasure  of  this  exalted  mystery  (the  Incarna- 
tion) should  be  n)ade  over  to  the  charge  of  the  Virgin,  and  be  as 
though  buried  in  her  heart,  in  order  that  sliortly  afterwards,  wlien 
the  fitting  time  Avas  come,  it  might  be  communicated  to  all  the 
faithful "  (Calvin's  Commentary  upon  the  Harmony  of  the  Gospels, 
p.  49). 

Mary  is  therefore  our  only  witness,  not  alone  to  the  Incar- 
nation, but  also  to  the  Visitation,  to  the  Nativity,  to  the  Ado- 
ration of  the  Wise  Men,  to  the  Presentation  in  the  Temple,  to 
the  Flight  into  Egypt,  to  the  Wisdom  o^  Jesus  among  the 
Doctors,  and  to  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  Life  of  our  Divine 
Lord  upon  earth.  This  is  expressed  in  the  Gospel  in  quite  a 
characteristic  way.  When  speaking  of  the  great  testimonies 
borne  to  Jesus  during  His  infancy,  it  repeats  three  times : 
"•And  Mary  kept  all  these  wards  and  pondered  them  in  her 
heartP  "  That  is  to  say,"  observes  Calvin,  a  second  time,  "  that 
this  treasure  was  entrusted  to  her  to  keep  it  in  her  heart,  until 
the  fitting  time  came  when  it  was  to  be  made  manifest  to  oth- 
ers." Observe,  too,  that  in  spite  of  very  critical  circumstances 
that  might  have  seemed  to  make  it  the  duty  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin — certainly,  her  interest — to  speak  sooner,  yet  she  kept 
the  secret  locked  up  in  her  own  breast  so  long  as  Jesus  re- 
mained upon  earth.  Her  husband,  St.  Joseph,  m  the  inscru- 
table providence  of  God,  is  allowed  to  conceive  doubts  of 
Mary's  chastity,  yet  even  under  this  most  painful  trial  she  does 


414  IrsE,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

not  open  her  moutli  to  reveal  her  Divine  Maternity,  but  in 
silent  patience  awaits  her  justification  from  God.  But  now 
the  time  is  come  that  she  should  speak,  and  the  secrets  of 
God's  wisdom  and  power,  and  the  hidden  counsels  of  His  love, 
whereof  she  alone  of  creatures  had  before  been  fully  cognizant, 
are  by  her  revealed  to  the  Apostles  and  Evangelists. 

"  And  Mary  kept  all  these  things  and  pondered  them  in  her 
heart."  Your  readers  will  note  that  this  is  the  language  of  St. 
Luke,  in  whose  Gospel  all  the  particulars  of  the  Birth  and 
Infancy  of  Jesus  are  far  more  fully  recorded  than  by  any  other 
of  the  Evangelists.  Speaking  of  the  human  sources  of  his 
knowledge,  he  says  that  "he  has  diligently  attained  to  all 
things  from  the  beginning,  according  as  they  have  delivered 
them  unto  us  who  from  the  beginning  were  eye  witnesses  and 
ministers  of  the  AVord."  Mark  that  significant  phrase,  so  em- 
phatically repeated — ''from  the  beginning."  Who  was  such 
an  eye  witness  "from  the  beginning"?  None  but  Mary. 
The  learned  Protestant  connnentator,  Grotius — no  "  sacerdotal 
pretender" — has  observed  that  "  St.  Luke  seems  to  have  men- 
tioned this  fact  of  Mary's  habit  of  thoughtful  meditation  upon 
the  words  and  deeds  of  her  Divine  Son  and  of  others  in  His 
regard,  precisely  because  she  was  the  authority  fi-om  whom  he 
had  received  the  narrative  that  he  was  recordmg.  "Quod 
ideo  videtur  a  Luca  expressum,  quia  ipsam  habetat  harum  nar- 
rationem  Aiictorem "  (Grotius,  Annot.  in  Quatxior  Evan- 
(jelid). 

It  is  true  that  the  Mystery  of  the  Incarnation  had  been  in 
some  measure  revealed  to  St.  Joseph  by  the  Angel  sent  to 
reassure  him  as  to  the  spotless  purity  of  Mary  and  to  command 
him  to  take  her  to  his  home ;  also  to  Elizabeth  at  the  time  of 
the  Visitation,  when  she  exclaimed:  "Whence  is  this  to  me 
that  the  Mother  of  my  Lord  should  come  to  visit  mo  "  \  But 
both  of  these  witnesses,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  had 
been  dead  long  before  the  close  of  our  Lord's  life  upon  earth, 
and  we  may  be  quite  certain  tliat  God  did  not  allow  these  hid- 
den things  to  be  revealed  before  His  Resurrection,  according 
to  His  own  ex]H'ess  connnand  with  reference  to  the  Transfigu- 
ration and  other  tokens  of  His  Divinity.     I  repeat,  then,  Mary 


A  Rebutter.  415 

was  tlie  one  only  witness  who  could  speak  to  the  very  founda- 
tion of  the  Christian  Faith.  Her  pure  heart  is  thus  our  Lord's 
first  Gospel.  In  that  virginal  and  maternal  heart,  now  conse- 
crated by  a  whole  life  of  silence,  of  humility,  and  of  holy  re- 
serve, we  read  transcribed  by  St.  Luke,  the  account  of  the 
great  event  of  the  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God.  To  that 
event,  as  to  their  basis,  all  the  other  events  and  all  the  other 
evangelical  mysteries  refer.  Whence  the  beautiful  saying  of 
St.  Ildephonsus,  when  he  calls  the  Blessed  Mother  "  God's 
Evangelist,  under  whose  discipline  the  AVord  made  a  Child 
was  brought  up." 

My  object,  in  what  I  have  jnst  said,  has  been  simply  to  sug- 
gest to  thoughtful  Protestants  the  beautiful  harmony  and  pro- 
portion of  everything  connected  with  Mary's  position  in  the 
Gospel  record  of  the  scheme  of  Man's  Redemption ;  and  fur- 
thermore to  ask  them  this  question :  Whose  doctrine  in  her 
regard  is  the  more  evangelical  f  Yours — who  see  in  her  an 
ordinary  woman,  a  saint  it  may  be,  but  nothing  more,  or  ours 
— who  confess  her  to  be  Mother  of  God,  our  Redeemer,  and 
who  render  her  the  honor  due  to  that  dignity? 

To  proceed.  In  this  connection,  and  to  give  some  color  to 
the  statement  which  I  have  just  considered,  the  Vicar  has  been 
guilty  of  a  most  dastardly  infamy.  I  ask  the  most  thoughtful 
attention  of  your  readers  while  I  expose  it. 

In  the  two  closing  paragraphs  of  this  letter  ho  names  these 
Fathers :  Origen,  Basil  the  Great,  Jerome,  Tertullian,  Chrys- 
ostom,  St.  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  Gregory  Xaziauzen,  and  Am- 
brose.    He  gives  a  quotation  from  St.  Cyril,  and  then  says  : 

"  I  cite  them  not  in  order  to  parade  their  opinion  on  certain 
texts  as  infallible  authority,  but  simply  to  show  that  it  was  far 
from  the  Church's  mind  of  the  early  centuries  to  suppose  that 
the  Virgin  apprehended  the  mystery  of  which  she  was  the 
willing  instrument"  (that  is,  the  Incarnation). 

A  more  monstrous  falsehood  was  iiever  penned.  There  is 
not  ONE  Father  whom  lie  can  cite  for  any  such  proposition, 
since,  iis  we  have  seen,  it  is  directly  contrary  to  the  Gospel.  It 
is  the  offspring  of  a  malevolent  heart  and  a  muddled  brain. 
And,  moreover,  he  stole  the  objection,  such  as  it  is,  from  Car- 


416  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

dinal  Kewman,  without  giving  his  answer,  because  had  he  done 
80,  like  Pusey  he  would  have  had  nothing  to  say.  Let  me 
explain. 

Cardinal  Newman,  in  his  "  Letter  "  to  Pusey,  is  inquiring 
into  the  doctrine  of  Antiquity  on  the  subject  of  Mary's  pre- 
rogatives. Now  the  world  admits  that  he  is  a  theologian  too 
candid  and  fearless  to  put  out  of  sight  or  explain  away  adverse 
facts  from  fear  of  scandal,  or  from  the  expediency  of  contro- 
versy. And  here  he  proves  that  he  merits  the  distinction 
accorded  him.  Pusey  did  not  take  the  point  in  his  Eirenicon, 
to  which  the  Cardinal  is  replying.  He  raises  it  himself  in 
these  words : 

"It  is  true  that  several  great  Fathers  of  the  fourth  century  do 
imply  or  assert  that  on  one  or  two  occasions  she  did  sin  venially  or 
showed  infimjity.  This  is  the  only  real  objection  which  I  know  of; 
and  as  I  do  not  wish  to  pass  it  over  lightly,  I  propose  to  consider  it 
at  the  end  of  this  Letter." 

And  he  does  consider  it  in  J^oie  3  to  his  Letter, — a  piece  of 
exegetical  writing  not  to  be  paralleled  in  our  language.  I  can 
assure  your  readers  that  the  supposed  difficulty,  put  by  Cardi- 
nal Newman  himself,  vanishes  into  thin  air.  The  Fathers 
spoken  of  are  St.  Basil,  St.  Chrysostom,  and  St.  Cyril  of  Alexan- 
dria. His  commentary  on  these  occupy  twenty-four  pages, 
and  I  do  not  propose  to  mangle  it.  In  the  second  volume  of 
the  Eirenicon,  which  is  a  reply  to  the  Cardinal's  Letter,  Pusey 
has  not  only  not  one  word  to  say  against  his  exposition,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  expresses  his  agreement  with  the  Cardinal  in 
these  most  striking  words :  "  I  have  not  spoken  as  those  Fathers 
spake,  for  whom  you  apologize,  and  whose  language  you  ex- 
plain. /  could  neither  use  it  nor  cite  it,  and  I  mm'vel  that 
they  xised'  it.^^  The  coarse  spirit  of  my  opponent  is  not 
troubled  with  such  delicate  qualms. 

But  I  am  concerned  now  only  with  the  Vicar's  assertion  that 
these  Fathers  show  that  the  Blessed  Virgin  did  not  apprehend 
the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  When  he  made  this  statement 
he  had  Cardinal  Newman's  open  page  before  him,  for  from  it 
and  Littledale  he  "  cooked  up  "  his  monstrosity.  Yet  St.  Basil 
in  his  Epistle,  on  that  very  page,  emphatically  affirms  that 


A  Rebutter.  417 

Mary  had  "  the  secret  knowledge  of  the  Divine  Conceptions^ 
and  that  she  "  had  been  taught  from  above  tlie  things  concern- 
ing the  LordS^  On  the  same  page,  too,  and  under  the  Vicar's 
eyes,  St.  Chrysostom  says  that  Mary,  on  liearing  the  Angel's 
word,  "  searcJied  what  was  the  nature  of  the  salutation^''  and 
knew  the  ^^  clear  fact"  of  the  Incarnation  before  she  gave  her 
consent.  Now  what  is  all  this  but  the  Gospel  record  already 
discussed  ?  But  what  have  I  to  say  in  reply  to  his  quotation 
from  St.  Cyril  ?  It  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  the  question 
whether  or  not  Mary  "  apprehended  the  mystery  "  of  the  In- 
carnation. Cyril  is  discussing  whether  the  Blessed  Virgin 
actually  doubted  at  the  crucifixion.  Here  is  Cardinal  New- 
man's answer : 

"As  to  St.  Cyril  ....  he  does  not,  strictly  speaking,  say  more 
than  that  our  Lady  was  g^evously  tempted.  This  does  not  imply 
sin,  for  our  Lord  was  '  tempted  in  all  things  as  we  are,  yet  without 
sin.'"' 

And  again,  he  observes: 

"On  the  other  hand,  we  admit,  rather  we  maintain,  that  except 
for  the  grace  of  God,  she  might  have  sinned ;  and  that  she  may  have 
been  exposed  to  temptation  in  the  sense  in  wliieh  our  Loi-d  was  ex- 
posed to  it.  Though  as  His  Divine  Nature  made  it  impossible  for 
Him  to  yield  to  it,  so  His  gi-ace  preserved  her  under  its  assaults 
also." 

I  would  ask  your  interested  readers  to  compare  Littledale, 
Cardinal  Newman,  and  Father  Ryder  on  the  question  discussed 
by  Saints  Basil,  Cyril,  and  Chrysostom.  It  will  amply  repay 
them. 

In  the  face  of  all  this,  has  my  criticism  on  the  Vicar  under 
this  head  been  too  severe?  I  submit  that  it  has  not.  Readers 
familiar  with  rhe  writings  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  for  instance, 
know  his  metliod  of  treating  questions.  He  gathers  up  all  the 
objections  possible  against  the  proposition  or  thesis  he  has  to 
maintain,  an. I  he  then  refutes  them,  one  by  one.  It  is  said  that 
from  the  objections  so  put  in  St.  Thomas'  pages,  Voltaire  stole 
the  matter  of  his  attacks  on  religion.  The  Vicar  simply  imi- 
tates him.  Cardinal  Newman  volunteers  a  seeming  difficulty 
only  to  solve   it  for  inquiring  minds.      The  great   Jesuit, 


418  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Petaviiis,  had  done  the  same  thing,  and  but  for  the  fearless 
honesty  of  the  Catholic  writers,  Littledale  would  not  have  been 
able  to  supply  the  Vicar  with  "scraps."  The  Yicar  now 
snatches  up  the  objection,  twists  it  out  of  its  proper  relations, 
and  throws  it  like  a  strangled  corpse  into  the  face  of  the  general 
reader,  who  is  not  always  able  to  estimate  it  at  its  true  value. 
And  this  he  professes  to  do  under  the  obligation  of  a  "  priestly 
vow  " !  This  he  does,  too,  while  proclaiming  to  the  world  that 
"  It  has  been  the  hard  and  sorrowful  lot  of  the  English  Church 
....  to  have  to  wear  the  appearance  of  those  who  fail  to 
yield  (the  Mother  of  Jesus)  her  proper  honor."  The  consum- 
mate hypocrite !  Avaunt ! 
i 

Twentieth  Letter. — He  opens  this  letter  with  an  apology 
for  his  inability  to  keep  his  "  priestly  vow  " — in  a  very  impor- 
tant particular,  too.     He  says : 

"Unfortunately  I  shall  not  be  able  to  return,  as  promised,  to  the 
consideration  of  the  Catena  of  questionable  quotations  supplied  by 
my  opponent  in  support  of  his  contention  in  the  early  part  of  his 
Rejoinder.  It  is  fortunate  for  him  that  my  Strictures  must  be  cut 
short." 

"  Fortunate  for  him,"  forsooth !  What  has  my  good  or  bad 
fortune  to  do  with  the  matter  ?  He  assured  your  readers  that 
he  was  bound  by  his  "  priestly  vow  "  to  "  be  ready,  with  all 
faithful  diligence,  to  banish  and  drive  away  all  erroneous  and 
strange  doctrines  contrary  to  God's  Word."  Now  the  "  quo- 
tations "  in  the  "  early  part "  of  m}^  liejoinder,  are  in  support 
either  of  very  truth  or  what  is  very  "  contrary  to  God's  Word." 
What  becomes  of  the  "  priestly  vow  "  ?  The  cowardly  brag- 
gart! 

But  here,  unfortunately  for  him,  he  furnishes  your  readers 
with  a  test  absolute  and  final,  of  his  utter  indifference  to  "  God's 
Word,"  the  "  Great  Assize,"  and  the  "  burning  lake."  After 
his  confused  way,  he  devotes  another  paragraph  here  to  St. 
Cyril  of  AlexaTidria.  He  copies  from  Littledale's  Plain  Rea- 
sons a  "  scrap "  of  the  Saint's  comment  on  St.  John  xix.  26, 
and  then  adds : 


A  Kebutter.  419 

"  Let  any  one  compare  (this)  commentary  ....  with  the  extract 
attributed  to  S.  Cyril  of  Alexandria  by  Romanists,  given  by  my 
opponent  in  Globe,  April  20,  1888,  and  judge  for  himself  whether 
the  two  could  possibly  have  come  from  the  same  pen.  Apart  from 
other  evidence,  the  latter  stands  self-condemned." 

"  Attributed  to  St.  Cyril  by  Romanists."  This  is  the  language 
he  holds  on  the  famous  sermon  preached  by  St.  Cyril  against 
the  arch-heretic  Nestorius,  before  the  Council  of  Ephesus  (A.D. 
431),  in  the  Cathedral  Church  of  St.  Mary  in  that  city.  In 
the  sixth  letter  of  my  Rejoinder  will  be  found  the  quotation 
from  this  sermon,  of  which  the  Yicar  speaks.  During  this  di&. 
cussiou  '  I  "vve  challenged  from  your  readers  absolute  credence 
for  eve-'y  critical  statement  I  have  made.  What  have  I  to  say 
to  his  present  assertion  \  Simply  that  he  has  again  played  the 
part  of  a  deliberate  and  malignant  falsifier, — that  there  is  not 
a  semblance  of  truth  to  support  it.  I  liave  ransacked  all  the 
authorities  for  even  one  expression  of  suspicion  of  its  genuine- 
ness, but  have  failed  to  find  it.  I  need  not,  however,  have 
taken  the  trouble.  Cardinal  iS'^ewman  quotes  part  of  it  in  his 
Letters  to  Pusey.  Pusey  in  his  reply  {Eirenicon,  Yol.  2,  p.  29), 
accepts  the  Cardinal's  extract,  expands  it  to  twice  its  length, 
and  then  adds:  "I  adopt  it  all."  Moreover,  in  a  note, 
Pusey  says : 

"I  have  followed  in  some  slight  things  a  text  amended  from  MSS., 
collated  by  my  son,  which  I  mention  lest  certain  critics  should 
accuse  me  of  falsifying. " 

"  Attributed  to  St.  Cyril  by  Romanists,"  says  tliis  pseudo- 
" priest"  of  the  "truth-loving  ....  Church  of  England." 
Has  iniquity  ever  more  atrociously  lied  to  itself  ?  Alas  1  for 
the  "priestly  vow."  Were  the  "old  Catholic,"  Nestorius,  to 
come  xip  on  the  earth  again  (speaking  Dantesqucly),  what  an 
ally,  true  and  tried,  would  he  find  in  the  "  old  Catholic  "  of  the 
"  Mission  Clmrch  "  ! 

And  now  I  approach  the  beginning  of  the  end.  The  worth- 
less remains  of  the  Strictures  will  not  detain  me  long. 

The  Vicar  objects  to  my  statement  that  Anglicanism  was 
begotten  of  the  brutal  lust  of  Henry  VIH.     But  my  authority 


420  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ihsum. 

was  Lord  Campbell,  Chief  Justice  of  England.  Moreover, 
there  is  but  one  opinion  about  it  from  Hudibras  to  Pusey. 
The  "  Gospel  light,"  says  Hudibras,  "  first  beamed  "  in  "  the 
good  old  country  "  from  the  lascivious  eyes  of  an  exceedingly 
unpleasant  daughter  of  llerodias.  And  Pusey  affirms  the 
same  proposition  in  these  wortio . 

"  Had  we  a  S.  Louis  instead  of  a  sovei-eign  who,  owning  no  mas- 
ter except  his  lusts,  his  rapacity,  and  his  ambition,  confounded  all, 
right  and  wrong,  the  great  quarrel  between  the  Crown  of  England 
and  the  Pope  in  the  sixteenth  century  might  have  been  averted " 
(Eirenicon,  Vol.  3,  p.  180). 

To  offset  this  the  Yicar  "  trots  out "  for  the  millionth  time  the 
old,  old  story.  The  worn-out  tales  of  Popes,  Bishops,  and 
priests,  charged  with  infidelity  to  their  high  calling,  has  been 
the  staple  of  Protestant  tradition  and  the  basis  of  the  Protestant 
view  of  the  Catholic  Church  since  Protestantism  began.  I  will 
say  a  few  words  on  this  topic  in  my  notes  on  his  next  letter. 

Twenty-first  Letter. — He  continues  here  the  same  subject. 
Now,  granting  for  argument's  sake  that  there  is  too  much 
truth  in  the  Vicar's  charge,  that  there  have  been  periods  when 
much  evil  existed  among  the  clergy  and  laity,  even  among  the 
highest  dignitaries  of  the  Church.  In  answer  to  this  I  submit 
to  thoughtful,  honest  men,  that  "  there  never  was  an  epoch, 
never  a  year,  never  a  day  since  Jesus  Christ  ascended  into 
Heaven,  that  there  has  not  existed  on  this  earth,  plainly  visible 
to  all  men,  a  society  of  pre-eminent  Fanctity,  notable,  not  only 
by  the  holiness  of  its  doctrines,  but  also  by  tlie  heroic  sanctity 
of  multitudes  of  its  members,  teaching,  by  miracles  and  exam- 
ple, both  the  precepts  and  the  counsels  of  the  Lord  Jesus. 
There  never  was  a  time  when  the  evil  lives  of  the  Church's 
children  were  not  evidently  in  opposition  to  the  doctrines  they 
professed,  or  rendered  it  difficult  to  distinguish  the  true  Church 
from  the  heresies  which  surrounded  it.  The  so-called  dark  ages 
(tenth  and  eleventh  centuries),  with  all  their  abuses,  were  rich 
in  saints."  And,  moreover,  there  never  was  a  moment  when 
the  Catholic  Church  failed  to  proclaim  "  that  it  were  better  for 


A  Rebutter.  421 

sun  and  moon  to  drop  from  heaven,  for  the  earth  to  fail,  and 
for  all  the  many  millions  who  are  on  it  to  die  of  starvation  in 
extremest  agony,  as  far  as  temporal  affliction  goes,  than  that 
one  soul,  I  will  not  say  should  be  lost,  but  should  eonnnit  one 
single  venial  sin."  This  is  the  great  and  most  glorious  charac- 
teristic of  the  Catholic  Church,  which,  writes  Cardinal  New- 
man, "  has  been  brought  home  to  me  so  closely  and  vividly 
since  I  have  been  a  Catholic"  {Anglican  Difficulties,  pp. 
197-8). 

Let  the  same  master  pen  sum  up  for  us  the  argumentative 
and  controversial  value  of  this  kind  of  evidence  against  the 
Catholic  Church : 

"If  Satan  can  so  well  avail  himself  even  of  the  gifts  and  glories 
of  the  Church,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  he  can  be  skilled  also  in  his 
exhibition  and  use  of  those  offences  and  scandals  which  ai-e  his  own 
work  in  her  now  or  in  former  times.  My  brethi-en,  she  has  scan- 
dals, she  has  a  reproach,  she  has  a  shame ;  no  Catholic  will  deny  it. 
Slie  has  ever  had  the  reproacli  and  shame  of  being  the  mother  of 
cliildren  unworthy  of  her.  She  has  good  chilth^n, — she  has  many 
more  bad.  Such  is  the  will  of  God,  as  declared  from  the  beginning. 
He  might  have  formed  a  pure  Church ;  but  He  has  exjjressly  pre- 
dicted that  the  cockle,  sown  by  the  enemy,  shall  i-emain  with  the 
wlieat,  even  to  the  harvest  at  the  end  of  the  world.  He  pronounced 
that  His  Church  sliould  be  like  a  fisher's  net,  gathering  of  every 
kind,  ajid  not  examined  till  the  evening.  Nay,  more  than  this,  He 
declared  that  the  bad  and  imperfect  should  far  surpass  the  good. 
'  Many  are  called, '  He  said,  '  but  few  are  chosen ' ;  and  His  Apostle 
speaks  of  a  'remnant  saved  accoitling  to  the  election  of  grace.' 
There  is  ever,  then,  an  abundance  of  materials  m  the  lives  and  the 
histories  of  Catholics,  ready  to  the  use  of  those  opi>onents  who, 
starting  with  the  notion  that  the  Holy  Church  is  the  work  of  the 
devil,  wish  to  liave  some  corroboration  of  their  leading  idea.  Her 
very  prerogative  gives  special  opportunity  for  it;  I  mean,  that  she 
is  the  Church  of  all  lands  and  of  all  times.  If  there  was  a  Judas 
among  the  Apostles,  and  a  Nicliolas  among  the  deacons,  why  should 
we  be  surprised  that  in  the  course  of  eighteen  hundred  yeai-s  there 
should  be  flagrant  instances  of  cruelty,  of  unfaithfulness,  of  hypoc- 
risy, or  of  profligacy,  and  that  not  only  in  the  Catholic  people,  but 
in  high  places,  in  royal  palaces,  in  Bishops'  households,  nay,  in  the 
seat  of  Peter  itself?  Why  need  it  surprise  if,  in  l)arbarous  ages 
or  in  ages  of  luxury,  there  have  been  bishops,  or  abbots,  or  priests 
who  have  forgotten  themselves  and  their  God,  and  served  the  world 


422  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum.  i 

or  the  flesh,  and  have  perished  in  that  evil  service  ?  What  triumpl)  is 
it,  though,  in  a  long  line  of  between  two  or  three  hundred  popes,  amid 
martyrs,  confessors,  doctors,  sage  rulers,  and  loving  fathei-s  of  their 
people,  one,  or  two,  or  three  are  found  who  fulfill  the  Lord's  descrip- 
tion of  the  wicked  servant,  who  began  '  to  strike  the  man-servants 
and  maid-servants,  and  to  eat  and  drink  and  be  drunk.'  What  will 
come  of  it,  though  we  grant  that  at  this  time  or  that,  here  or  there, 
mistakes  in  policy,  or  ill-advised  measures,  or  timidity,  or  vacilla- 
tion in  action,  or  secular  maxims,  or  inhumanity,  or  narrowness  of 
mind,  have  seemed  to  influence  the  Church's  action  or  her  bearing 
towards  her  children?  I  can  only  say  that,  taking  man  as  he  is,  it 
would  be  a  miracle  were  such  offences  altogether  absent  from  her 
history." 

Having  made,  tlien,  these  candid  and  generous  admissions  to 
the  bursting  out  of  poor  human  nature  under  the  Catholic  sys- 
tem, I  might  fairly  ask  how  the  same  wild  and  raging  element 
in  us  all  works  under  the  Protestant  system.     Why,  as  the 
public  very  well  knows,  two  or   three  years  ago  this  very 
Province  was  reeking  with  the  infamies  of  certain  Protestant 
ministers,  and  tlie  Press  throughout  the  Dominion  and  the 
United  States  daily  witnesses  to  the  like  facts.     What  would 
my  Protestant  friends  say  were  I  such  a  dolt  as  to  cite  these 
scandals  as  an  argument  against  their  respective  creeds  ?     Their 
answer  would  be  this :  AVheu  you  succeed  in  reconciling  the 
presence  of  so  much  sin  and  evil  in  the  world  with  the  exist- 
ence of  a  beneficent,  omniscient,  and  omnipotent  Creator,  we 
will  explain  the  vice  and  corruption  that  breaks  out  among  our 
clergy  and  laity.     I  will  do  the  same  thing  on  our  behalf  when 
they  will  have  made  a  like  explanation  to  me.  The  first  man  born 
into  the  world  killed   the  second ;    there  were  wicked  liigli- 
priestsin  the  history  of  Israel, — the  first  connived  at  the  worship 
of  the  golden  calf,  and  the  last  demanded  the  death  of  the  God- 
Man,  who  came  to  save  His  people ;  and  Littledale  proves  that 
the  English  "Eeformers" — Cranmer,  Ridley,  Latimer,  Jewell, 
Parker,  Barlow,  Scory  &  Co. — were  "  utterly  unredeemed  vil- 
lainsP     Away,  then,  with  such  arguments  as  the  Vicar  and  his 
"kidney"  attempt  to  draw  from  alleged  scandals  in  the  Catho- 
lic Cliurch.    Poor  human  nature  accounts  for  them  all,  and  the 
daily  cry  of  every  honest  heart  is — "  Save  us.  Lord,  we  perish." 


A  Rebutter.  423 

But  why,  then,  do  I  refer  to  the  crimes  of  Henry  VIII.? 
Because,  as  Pusey  admits,  they  are  the  very  rock  whence  An- 
glicanism is  hewn  out.  To  avoid  repetition,  I  ask  your  readers 
to  turn  here  to  the  last  six  paragraphs  of  the  ninth  letter  of 
the  Rejoinder.  I  will  now  but  supplement  what  I  have  there 
written. 

I  will  begin  by  exposing  a  delusive  dream,  a  very  fable, 
nowadays  much  in  fashion  with  Anglo-ritualists,  and  which  the 
terror  of  approaching  Disestablishment  has  constrained  nearly 
all  the  various  parties  of  the  Anglican  Church  to  adopt. 

The  idea  is  this.  It  is  assumed  as  a  lirst  principle,  that  from 
Apostolic  times,  there  has  always  existed  a  National  Church 
in  England,  quite  independent  of  Rome  and  the  rest  of  Chris- 
tendom. That  this  Church  in  British,  Saxon,  and  Norman 
times  struggled  continually  with  the  gradually  usurping  power 
of  Rome,  and  the  insidious  introduction  of  popish  doctrines, 
from  which  it  was  at  first  quite  free,  and  against  which  it 
always  protested.  That  this  double  yoke,  becoming  at  length 
unbearable,  the  English  Church,  in  the  person  of  its  Bishops, 
seized  the  first  opportunity  offered  by  a  quarrel  between  Henry 
VIII.  and  the  Pope,  to  assert  her  independence  of  papal  juris- 
diction, and  to  reform  herself  from  popish  errors. 

Now,  to  the  student  of  English  history  during  the  Tudor 
period,  with  the  wealth  of  documentary  evidence  daily  increas- 
ing, as  MS.  after  MS.  is  being  brought  to  light,  the  Anglican 
first  principle  can  only  appear  as  a  fabulous,  a  monstrous  delu- 
sion. 

On  the  eve  of  the  dfiy  when  Henry  VIII.'s  lust  was  excited 
by  the  charms  of  Anne  Boleyn,  what  was  the  state  of  the 
Church  of  England  ?  She  then  formed  two  important  Prov- 
inces of  the  one  Catholic  Church — Provinces  in  full  and  per- 
fect communion  with  Rome,  and  with  all  the  other  Churches 
in  union  with  the  Holy  See.  Her  faith  was  identically  the 
same  as  that  of  Rome,  and  of  these  Churches.  Henry  VIII. 
had,  a  short  time  before,  and  in  opposition  to  Luther,  written 
an  able  theological  defense  of  orthodox  doctrine,  in  which  the 
full  supremacy  and  jurisdiction  of  the  Pope  were  set  forth  and 
proved,  together  with  the  full  doctrine  of  the  Sacraments,  as 


421  Ii'SK,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

tauglit  later  by  the  Council  of  Trent.  For  his  book  he  re- 
ceived from  the  Pope  the  title  of  "  Defender  of  the  Faith," — 
a  title  still  appropriated  by  English  sovereigns,  male  and 
female ;  his  work  was  hailed  with  delight  by  the  Bishops, 
clergy,  and  people  of  England.  This  Catholic  country  (none 
more  so  in  Europe)  was  proud  of  its  Catholic  King.  Will 
any  one  with  any  knowledge  of  history,  maintain  that  King 
Ilem-y's  book  taught  a  strange,  un-English  doctrine,  personal 
simply  to  the  King;  that  it  was  in  opposition  to  the  faith 
of  the  English  episcopate  and  clergy;  that  it  was  not,  on 
the  contrary,  the  plain  enumeration  of  the  doctrine  common 
to  all  the  English  schools  ?  Had  a  Conference  of  the  Bishops 
been  summoned  to  give  an  answer  to  Luther  instead  of  the 
King,  would  its  voice  have  differed,  otherwise  than  in  style 
(if  in  that)  from  the  book  of  the  royal  author,  himself  an  ac- 
comphshed  theologian?  The  Church  of  England  had  no 
quarrel  with  the  Church  of  Eome.  She  did  not  look  upon 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  Pope  as  an  usurpation,  but  taught  his 
supremacy  in  the  very  words  of  the  definition  of  the  Council 
of  Florence — as  an  Article  of  revealed  Faith.  Her  enemy  in 
past  ages,  against  which  her  Bishops  had  often  appealed  to 
Rome,  was  the  usurping  Civil  Power.  The  more  holy  her 
bishops,  the  bolder  their  appeal  to  Rome.  The  English  Clnirch 
counted  among  her  saints  and  martyrs,  those  of  her  children 
who  had  suffered  for  their  fidelity  to  Rome,  and  no  saints  were 
more  popular  with  the  people,  for  the  Church's  cause  was 
their  cause. 

The  enemies  of  the  Church  had  been  at  times  the  King,  and 
always  a  godless,  licentious,  and  arrogant  party  among  the 
nobility.  These  were  by  their  nature  opposed  to  Rome, 
though  none  had  yet  dared  to  deny  the  Pope's  supreme 
spiritual  power.  A  bad  King,  however,  might  count  on  these 
bad  nobles,  in  any  quarrel  he  might  have  with  *he  Pope.  The 
crash  came.  Lord  Campbell  puts  it  well :  "  In  the  .  .  .  year 
1534  Henry,  finding  that  there  was  no  chance  of  succeeding 
with  his  divorce  suit  with  the  sanction  of  the  Pope,  uvd  being 
impatient  to  mat'ry  Ann  Boleyn,  resolved  to  break  with 
Rome  altogether,  and  ....  to  vest  in  himself  the  jurisdic- 


A  Rebi  riER.  425 

tion  which  the  Pope  had  hitherto  exercised  in  EngUuid." 
Henry  defied  the  Pope,  and  bade  the  Convocation  of  Bishops 
do  Ukewise.  Did  they  gladly,  freely  seize  upon  this  oppor- 
tunity for  asserting  their  independence,  and  for  ridding  their 
Church  of  popish  errors?  Nothing  of  the  kind.  Grudg- 
ingly, unwillingly,  bit  by  bit,  in  fear  and  terror,  with  huniili- 
'  ating  and  disgraceful  cowardice  and  equivocation  they  bent  to 
the  storm.  Fisher,  the  one  only  saint  among  them,  suffered 
niartyrdom,  rather  than  follow  his  craven  brethren  in  their 
fehameful  apostasy.  The  rest  were  men.  Catholic  for  the  most 
l)art  in  belief,  but  not  holy :  they  were  unmortified,  loving 
their  ease,  their  luxuries,  their  great  riches ;  trembling,  with 
the  craven  fear  of  those  who  lead  voluptuous  lives,  before  the 
wratli  of  a  King,  whose  wrath  the  bravest  could  hardly  bear 
unmoved. 

These  unsaintly  men  preferred  riches,  honors,  and  luxury 
with  apostasy,  to  niin,  prison,  and  probably  a  cruel  death  with 
honor.  But  dare  we,  in  the  face  of  history,  say  that  they  aj)- 
jyroved  of  this  breach  with  Rome,  and  with  all  the  ancient 
glories  of  their  order  %  Is  there  tlie  slightest  doubt,  that  in 
their  hearts  and  consciences,  they  accepted  the  arguments 
which  the  martyr  Fisher  made  in  his  noble  speech  to  Convo- 
cation ?  And,  moreover :  this  breach  once  consununated,  did 
they  gladly,  freely,  continue  the  work  of  destruction  and  of 
60-called  reformation  ?  Did  they  desire  to  see  the  sacred  lan- 
guage of  the  Church  changed  for  the  vulgar  tongue,  the  Missal 
and  Breviary  give  place  under  Edward  V^I.  to  the  "  Book  of 
Comm(m  Prayer "  ?  History  is  there  to  prove  that,  if  they 
were  cowards,  they  did  not  descend  to  this  abject  folly.  That 
work  was  done  by  those  new  creatures  of  the  King,  Littledale's 
"utterly  unredeemed  villains" — Cranmer,  Latimer,  Ridley, 
and  Hooper — men  who,  before  the  breach  with  Rome,  would 
never  have  been  raised  to  the  episcopate,  and  who,  by  the 
wave  of  a  Catholic  reformation,  would  have  been  swept,  with 
the  other  unworthy  clerics  of  the  time,  into  that  disgrace  which 
their  crimes  merited.  The  old  bishops  looked  on,  or  tried  at 
least  to  delay  the  foul  work.  Many  in  their  old  age,  obtained 
grace  enough  to  make  a  partial  stand  under  Edward  VI.,  and 


426  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

to  sufifer  deposition  and  imprisonment.  At  length,  when  Mary 
once  more  gave  them  hberty,  they  joyfully  cast  off  the  cursed 
yoke  forever,  and,  chastened  by  past  misforaines,  remained 
true  to  the  Old  Faith,  being  ready,  uiider  Elizabeth,  to  suffer 
imprisonment  and  exile  rather  than  yield  a^rain. 

Where,  then,  is  this  continuous  English  Church,  whose  or- 
thodoxy the  world  is  now  asked  to  acknowledge  ?  What  has 
the  present  Anglican  Establishment,  raised  on  the  ruins  Eliza- 
beth made  of  the  Church  she  found  standing,  in  common  with 
the  old  Provinces  of  Canterbury  and  York,  Provinces — in 
communion  of  faith  and  discipline  with  the  Catliohc  world  ? 
All  the  Catholic  Church  asks  of  Anglicans  and  Anglo-Ritual- 
ists to-day,  is  to  accept  that  faith,  which  the  entire  Church  of 
England  held  before  Henry  VIII.,  together  with  those  salu- 
tary reforms  in  discipline,  inaugurated  by  the  Council  of 
Trent,  aud  "which  would  have  been  hailed  with  joy,  by  every 
good  man  then  in  England.  Such  are  substantially  the  facts 
of  the  relation  of  Henry  VIII.  to  the  Anglican  Church,  as 
they  are  so  clearly  put  by  Father  Richardson  in  What  are 
the  Roman  Catholic  Claims  f  What  the  Vicar's  "  scholars  " 
and  Bishop  Kingdon  ought  to  set  themselves  to  prove  is,  that 
this  Royal  Supremacy  in  Spirituals,  fished  up  out  of  the  depths 
of  Boleyn's  lascivious  eyes,  is  compatible,  either  with  historic 
facts  before  the  time  of  Henry,  or  with  the  Christian  faith  in 
itself,  or  with  reason  as  the  general  guide  of  human  things ; 
that  our  Divine  Saviour  has  made  promises  to  be  with  it  and 
with  the  Bishops  who  are  created  by  it;  and  that  He  has 
promised  in  general  to  be  with  Bishops  who  allege  that  they 
make  a  portion  of  the  Church,  though  not  in  communion  witli 
the  rest  of  it,  even  as  they  themselves  conceive  it,  and  who  be- 
sides receive  their  spiritual  jurisdiction _  from  a  King  or  a 
Queen. 

While  the  Bishop,  the  Vicar,  and  his  "  scholars ''  are  work- 
ing out  their  little  exercise,  let  me  help  them  with  a  few  re- 
flections on  Dante — the  mightiest  poetic  genius  that  ever 
walked  this  earth.  By  what  fatuity  was  the  Vicar  led  to  cite 
him  against  me  in  this  controversy!  It  is  very  evident  he 
uever  read  the  Divine  Comedy,  but  was  supplied  by  somebody 


A  Rebutter.  427 

with  the  "scraps."  This  "sublime  Apocalypse"  has  been  well 
described  as — "  the  Suinma  of  the  Angelic  Doctor  set  before 
lis  in  raptures  of  Divinest  love  and  ecstacins  of  Divinest  po- 
etry."    The  Vicar,  referring  to  it,  says : 

"  The  Roman  Catholic  poet  Dante  is  very  plain-spoken  about 
the  Popes." 

"  Very  plain-spoken,"  surely.  Let  us  glance  at  the  poet's 
idea  of  the  Papacy  as  he  embodies  it  in  the  titles  of  honor 
which  he  bestows  upon  the  Pope.  According  to  Dante  the 
Pope  is  the  High  Priest,  the  Shepherd  and  Guide  df  the  flock, 
the  Spouse  of  the  Church,  who  is  his  liride,  and  his  chair  is  at 
Rome.  He  is  the  Vicar  of  Christ,  the  Head  of  the  World, 
the  Father  of  Fathers,  to  whom  all  owe  reverence,  even  the 
Emperor  himself,  as  the  first-born  son  to  his  father;  "the 
Chief  Pontiff,  Vicar  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  succesGor  of 
St.  Peter,  to  whom  we  owe,  not  indeed  all  that  we  owe  to 
Christ,  but  all  that  we  owe  to  Peter."  Therefore  the  Papacy 
is  the  liighest  and  holiest  dignity,  the  "  robe  of  sovereignty  "; 
and  to  renounce  the  Papacy  is  "the  great  renunciation."  To 
the  Pope  is  committed  the  power  of  the  keys ;  he  holds  "  the 
keys  of  glory  "  assigned  by  Christ  to  Peter,  "  within  whose 
mighty  grasp  our  Lord  did  leave  the  keys."  To  him  also  it 
belongs  to  feed  the  sheep  and  the  lambs.  (See  Hettinger's 
Divina  Commedia.) 

This  is  "  very  plain-spoken,"  I  admit,  and  I  have  no  doubt 
the  illustrious  Pius  IX.  had  them  in  his  mind,  when  in  1857 
he  placed  a  wreath  on  the  tomb  of  Dante  at  Ravenna,  as  a  wit- 
ness to  his  Catholic  loyalty  and  faith.  I  iiave  no  doubt,  too, 
that  Leo  XHL,  now  gloriously  reigning  knows  all  about  them, 
since  it  is  said  that  no  matter  where  a  quotation  is  started  in 
the  Divine  Comedy,  he  can  take  it  up  and  continue  it  to  the 
end  of  the  poem — memoriter. 

But  the  Vicar's  meditations  on  the  Royal  Supremacy  are 
disturbed  by  such  plain  speaking,  and  in  his  agony  he  cries  out 
tliat  Dante  puts  Pope  Celestine  V.  in  Hell : 

"And  saw  of  him  the  shade  whom  cowardice  base 
Led,  through  his  great  refusal,  to  disgrace. 


428  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

Forthwith  I  deemed,  and  felt  assured  was  true, 
That  this  the  crew  of  poltroons  base  must  be 
Whom  God  doth  hate,  and  whom  his  enemies  flee." 

Now,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  not  clear  who  is  meant  here,  and 
no  name  is  given.  Lombardi,  a  learned  Dantean  commenta- 
tor, maintains,  in  view  of  the  context,  which  indicates  a  fam- 
iliar acquaintance  with  the  person  alluded  to,  that  Dante's  allu- 
sion here  is  a  political  and  local  one,  that  he  had  in  his  mind 
some  one  of  his  fellow  citizens  whose  position  and  fortune 
could  have  saved  the  imperialistic  party  from  its  reverses,  and 
by  whom  these  valuable  aids  were,  through  avarice  or  lack  of 
public  spirit,  or  craven  fear,  refused.  Dean  Church,  an  Angli- 
can Dantean  scholar,  expresses  the  same  opinion,  while  Dean 
Milman,  History  of  Latin  Christianity ^  vol.  vi.,  p.  194,  thinks 
that  Dante  points  to  St.  Celestine  the  Fifth. 

But  granting,  for  argument's  sake,  that  Pope  Celestine  is 
meant,  what  are  the  undisputed  facts  of  history  ?  These  facts 
show  that  the  saint  and  pontiff  was  a  man  of  extraordinary 
piety,  a  monk  of  ther  Benedictine  order,  a  hermit,  and  the  au- 
thor of  several  religious  treatises.  They  further  show  that 
against  his  earnest  protest,  he  was  elected  to  the  pontificate  in 
a  very  troubled  time,  and  w^:en  he  wae  of  the  advanced  age  of 
seventy-two.  "  The  news  of  his  election,"  says  Darras,  His- 
tory of  the  Church,  vol.  iii.,  p.  414,  "drew  from  him  tears  of 

grief While  he  gave  himself  tip  to  tl^p  sweets  of  prayer 

and  contemplation,  in  a  cell  lohich  he  had  huilt  in  the  midst 
of  his  palace,  the  government  of  the  Church  was  in  a  state  of 

confusion Men  of  judgment  complained  of  such  a  state 

of  things ;  their  complaints  reached  the  ears  of  the  Pope.  He 
had  accepted  the  onerous  charge  only  to  avoid  a  seeming  oppo- 
sition to  the  will  of  God.  In  these  complaints  he  heard  the 
expression  of  the  same  divine  will,  warning  him  to  cast  down 
a  burden  too  heavy  for  his  weak  shoulders.  On  the  13th  of 
December,  1294,  tl>e  holy  Pope  convoked  the  cardinals  in  a  sol- 
emn consistory.  He  appeared  before  them  in  full  pontificals, 
and  read  aloud  his  resignation  of  the  papal  dignity.  Then 
stripping  off  all  the  pontifical  vestments,  he  once  more  put  on 
the  modest  habit  of  the  hermit,  and  took  leave  of  the  assem- 


A  Rebutter.  429 

bled  dignitaries,  who  followed  him  in  tears,  recommending  to 
his  prayers  the  now  widowed  Church." 

Such  are  the  facts  of  history.  Do  they  justify  Dante  in  say- 
ing that  they  describe  "  a  poltroon,"  one  "  disgraced  by  base 
cowardice  "  ?  Do  they  not  rather  describe  a  man  controlled 
by  sincere  piety,  by  a  lofty  sense  of  duty  ?  He  was  clearly 
within  his  rights  in  resigning,  and  the  disinterestedness  of  his 
conduct  is  praised  by  Petrarch  as  the  act  rather  of  an  angel 
than  of  a  man.  Yet,  solely  for  this  act,  Dante  classes  him 
among  the  reprobates,  with  the  sluggards  and  base  minded 
souls  (See  Wilstach's  Daniels  Divine  Comedy). 

Again  the  Vicar  states  that  Dante 

"Sees  Pope  Anastatius  in  hell  on  account  of  his  following  the 
heresy  of  Photinus." 

Well,  as  the  "good  Homer  sometimes  nods,"  so  does  the 
learned  Dante  fall  into  historical  mistakes — the  result  of  haste, 
or  of  insufficient  revision.  The  poet  erred  here  in  accepting 
the  authority  of  Martin  the  Pole,  Gratian,  and  others,  who 
asserted  that  Pope  Anastatius  restored  the  Eutychean,  Acacius, 
and  connnunicated  with  the  Acacian,  Phothius.  For  it  is  now 
certain,  according  to  the  testimony  of  Evazrius  (b.  iil,  c.  xxiii.), 
mcephorus  (b.  xv.,  c.  17),  and  Liberatus  ("Nestorian  Cause," 
c.  18),  that  Acacius  died  before  the  election  of  Pope  Anasta- 
tius the  Second ;  and  that  Martin  the  Pole,  etc.,  confounded 
the  Pope  with  the  emperor  of  the  same  name,  who  favored 
Acacius,  and  was  killed  by  lightning. 

Again  the  Vicar  says  that  Dante 

"Presents  a  terrible  picture  of  Pope  Nicholas  III.  in  hell  for 
simony— head  downwards  in  a  flammg  pit." 

Here  again  the  question  is  one  of  history,  not  of  doctrine, 
for  Dante  was  as  genuine  a  Papist  as  I  am.  Pope  Nicholas 
the  Third  assumed  the  Pontificate  in  1227.  The  Anglican 
Dean  Milman,  Latin  Christianity^  book  xi.,  c.  iv.,  says  of 
him : 

"At  length  the  election  fell  on  John  Gaetano,  of  the  noble 
Ronian  liouse,  tlie  Orsini,  a  man  of  remarkable  beauty  of  person 
antl  demeanor.    His  name,  'The  Accomplished,'  imx>lied  that  in 


430  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipshm. 

him  met  all  the  graces  of  the  handsomest  clerks  in  the  world,  but 
he  was  a  man  likewise  of  irreproachable  morals,  of  vast  ambition, 
and  of  great  ability." 

During  the  three  years  of  his  Pontificate,  he  compelled  both 
the  Einperor  Rudolph  and  Charles  of  Anjou  to  abandon  their 
claims  on  the  Holy  See,  labored  strenuously  and  with  success 
for  the  reunion  of  the  Greeks,  and  was  the  special  protector  of 
the  Franciscan  order.  Yet  Dante  condemns  him  to  hell,  on 
what  Dollinger  {History  of  the  Church,  vol.  iv.,  p.  75),  calls 
"  the  unproved  and  improbable  accusation  of  simony."  But 
notwithstanding  the  poet's  severity  to  the  man,  he  does  not 
forget  his  profound  reverence  for  and  loyalty  to  the  Papacy, 
for  he  thus  addresses  Nicholas : 

*'  And,  were  it  not  that  reverence  yet  me  awes 
For  the  Great  Keys  which  in  the  glad  life  came 
Into  thine  hands,  unworthy  of  the  same, 
I  should  use  heavier  words  of  blame." 

WUstach,  canto  xix.,  100. 

This  is  a  tempting  subject  to  me,  but  I  must  stay  my  hand. 
To  Dante  Christ  Himself  was  the  Prototype  of  the  Church  and 
of  her  visible  life ;  judging  all  things,  therefore,  by  the  stan- 
dard of  His  Divine  Ideal,  he  felt  keenly  the  contrast  between 
the  exemplar  and  the  copy  {Paradiso,  xxviii.,  55),  like  an  art- 
ist "  whose  trembling  hand  cannot  perfection's  ultimate  point 
command  "  (Paradiso,  xiii.,  77)  and  how  the  "  brightness  of 
the  seal"  is  dimmed  and  tarnished  by  human  frailty.  Hence 
his  severe- treatment  of  certain  Popes  is  a  defense  of  the  Pa- 
pacy itself,  since  it  is  the  very  dignity  of  their  office  which 
makes  any  fault  in  a  Pope  so  conspicuous.  The  great  poet 
was  human  and  therefore  liable  to  err.  His  errors  have  long 
since  passed  into  oblivion,  but  his  sublime  work  belongs  to 
mankind  for  all  time.  As  long  as  one  human  heart  beats  with 
love  for  the  sacred  things  of  human  nature — Freedom,  "Wis- 
dom, Faith,  so  long  will  the  name  of  the  author  of  the  Divine 
Commedia  be  loved  and  revered. 

Let  me  commend  to  my  opponents  Dante's  words  on  the 
teachiTig  authority  of  the  Church  : 


A  Rebutter.  431 

"  Christians!  be  ye  to  principles  more  true; 
Not  by  each  wind  be  ye  like  feathers  blown, 
Nor  deem  that  e^'^ery  fount  doth  merits  own, 
Ye  have  the  Testaments,  the  Old  and  New, 
Ye  have  the  Pastor  of  the  Church  your  guide ; 
Let  them  for  your  eternal  needs  provide." 

Wilstach,  Paradiso,  canto  v.,  73. 

Twenty-second  Letter. — For  confusion  and  chaos  this  takes 
tlie  prize.  More  arrant  rubbish  has  not  been  penned  since  the 
world  began.  Probably  it  is  just  as  well  that  not  a  Protestant 
who  read  it  understood  what  the  writer  was  talking  about.  I 
a&sure  them  they  have  lost  nothing.  A  few  years  ago  the  Rit- 
ualists got  hold  of  the  word  "  Jurisdiction,"  and,  like  the  witch 
on  the  broomstick,  they  have  been  riding  it  ever  since — try- 
ing to  reach  the  moon.  For  present  purposes  I  have  suffi- 
ciently disposed  of  this  letter  in  my  comments  on  the  last.  To 
readers  who  desire  to  go  more  thoroughly  into  the  farce  being 
played  by  Ritualists,  I  recommend  the  following  very  recent 
works : 

"Authority,  or  a  Plain  Reason  for  Joining  the  Church  of 
Rome,"  by  Father  Rivington  ;  "  Roman  Catholic  Claims,"  by 
Rev.  Charles  Gore ;  "  What  are  the  Roman  Catholic  Claims  ? " 
by  Father  Richardson ;  "  Dependence,  or  the  Insecurity  of  the 
Anglican  Position,"  by  Father  Rivington.  Fathers  Richard- 
son and  Rivington  are  both  learned  converts  to  the  Catholic 
Clmrch,  while  Mr.  Gore  is  Pusey's  theological  heir,  and  Prin- 
cipal of  Pusey  House,  Oxford.  He  was  selected  as  principal 
to  carry  out  Pusey's  theological  views  in  all  respects,  but  he 
has  recently  appeared  in  the  book  entitled  Lux  Mundi,  with 
an  essay  which  goes  right  to  the  heart  of  Pusey's  convictions 
as  to  the  Old  Testament.  The  veteran  Archdeacon  Dennisoii 
has  fulminated  an  assault  on  the  book  under  tlie  title  of  '*  The 
Political  Heresy  and  the  Intellectual  Heresy  of  Century  XIX. 
in  England."  And  the  end  is  not  yet.  What  a  happy  fam- 
ily, theologically  speaking,  are  Anglicans,  Anglo-ritualists,  et 
hoc  omne  genus  ! 

Twenty-third  and  Last  Letter. — This  is  the  saddest  let- 
ter of  the  batch.     Between  the  lines,  you  can  hear  the  wails 


432  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

that  accompany  the  apologies  and  the  humiliating  confessions 
of  regrets  over  unfulfiled  promises  "  to  smash  "  me.  Milton 
describes  the  fallen  angels  as  lying  in  a  "  lake  of  marl "  with 
no  rest  for  their  uneasy  limbs.  I  wonder  to  what  extent  their 
good  intentions  simply  were  a  factor  in  their  agony.  At  this 
stage  of  the  controversy  I  would  fain  be  generous  with  my 
opponent,  and  assure  him  that  in  the  next  world  there  are  hap- 
pily more  paths  than  one  paved  with  good  resolutions,  but  his 
turpitude,  made  manifest  now  even  to  his  own  dull  apprehen- 
sion, absolutely  prohibits  me.     Let  me  explain. 

In  the  last  paragraph  of  his  first  letter  in  this  discussion 
(third  preliminary  in  this  volume)  the  Vicar  says : 

"It  ought  to  be  remembered,  in  this  connection,  that  the  Church 
of  England  has  preserved  her  balance  well  under  the  ciixjumstances, 
and  observes  four  feasts  yearly  in  honor  of  the  Holy  Mother." 

In  the  last  letter  of  my  Resume  I  charged  him  with  sup- 
pressing a  fifth  feast  marked  in  the  English  Church  Calendar 
— that  of  the  "  Conception  of  the  Virgin  Mary,"  on  the  8th  of 
December ;  and  I  demanded  that  he  give  the  public  the  rea- 
son. He  wrote  his  first  Strictures  in  reply  to  the  Resume,  but 
said  not  a  word  in  explanation  of  his  ignorance  or  dishonesty. 
We  hear  from  him  now  only  because  he  thinks  it  "  advisable," 
he  says,  to  notice  my  charge. 

"  Advisable,"  indeed !  Is  not  this  the  language  of  the  very 
sneak-thief  when  caught  plying  his  trade  ?  He,  too,  thinks  it 
"advisable"  to  restore  the  stolen  property.  Was  the  Vicar 
afraid  that  an  earlier  and  more  candid  acknowledgment  of  his 
sin  might  disturb  the  "  balance  "  which  his  Church  was  able  to 
preserve  so  well — wi th 'only /bw?' feasts  on  her  hands?  Now 
watch  his  tactics.     He  says : 

' '  At  the  opening  of  the  controversy  I  inadvertently  alluded  to 
'  four '  instead  of  '  five '  feasts  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  commemorated 
in  the  English  Chtirch.  My  opponent  ....  takes  it  for  granted 
that  the  commemoration  I  suppressed  was  that  of  the  '  Conception 
of  the  Virgin.'" 

"  Takes  it  for  granted."  Why  not  ?  Has  he  dared  to  deny 
it  ?    Of  course  not.     But  he  does  not  hesitate  to  lie  about  it. 


A  Rebutter.  433 

"  I  inadvertently  alluded  to  four  feasts  instead  of  five,"  he  says. 
"Inadvertently!"  AVill  any  reader  of  these  letters  believe 
him  ?  Not  one.  The  simple  fact  is,  that  he  either  did  not 
know  that  the  feast  was  in  the  Calendar,  or  that  he  did  not 
know  what  to  do  with  it,  and  therefore  suppressed  it.  The 
latter  I  will  prove  to  be  the  true  view.    Now,  mark,  he  says : 

"  I  need  scarcely  observe  to  studious  cliurchmen  that  the  Black 
Letter  day  entered  on  our  Calendar  as  the  '  Conception  of  the  B.  V. 
Mary '  is  the  equivalent  of  what  the  Eastern  Church  commemorates 
under  the  more  accurate  title  of  'the  Conception  of  Anna,'  and  is 
intended  like  that  minor  feast  to  direct  attention  to  'the  remote 
dawnings  of  our  salvation,'  as  an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  of  the 
14th  century  puts  it,  and  to  provide  a  more  distant  hailing  of  the 
Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God  than  the  Feast  of  the  Annunciation 
supplies." 

Note  the  pathetically  cunning  appeal  to  "  studious  church- 
men " — the  rank  and  file  of  the  laity,  he  confesses,  are  not  sup- 
posed to  know  anything  about  this^^i^A  feast,  and  they  do  not. 
Small  blame  that  even  "  studious  churchmen  "  know  little  about 
it,  since  the  Vicar  himself  either  "  inadvertently  "  suppressed 
it,  or  was  ignorant  of  its  existence.  It  is  a  "  Black  Letter  day,'* 
you  know.     "What  contemptible  knavery ! 

He  informs  the  "  studious  churchmen  "  that  the  feast  of  the 
"  Conception  of  the  B.  Y.  Mary  "  is  the  equivalent  of  the  feast 
of  the  "Conception  of  Anna,"  which,  he  says,  is  a  "minor 
feast."  Could  the  humblest  intelligence  in  the  Salvation  Army 
ranks  display  greater  ignorance  and  stupidity !  A  "  minor 
feast,"  indeed.  Why,  they  are  one  and  the  same  thing,  and 
absolutely  identical.     Hear  Father  Perrone : 

"The  Feast  of  the  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  obtained 
among  the  Greeks  and  Orientals  from  the  earliest  times.  For  as 
early  as  the  fifth  century  we  come  across  traces  of  the  institution  of 
this  Feast.  In  the  Typicon  of  S.  Sabas  (who  flourished  in  A.D. 
484),  or  in  the  order  for  reciting  the  office  throughout  the  year  on 
Dec.  9,  it  is  marketl  down  '  The  Conception  (active,  i.e.)  of  S. 
Anne,  Mother  of  the  Deipara.''  Similarly  in  the  seventh  centiuy 
mention  is  made  of  the  same  Feast  by  S.  Andi-ew  of  Creto,  who  in 
the  ecclesiastical  Hours  and  Triodium,  on  Dec.  9,  thus  announces 
the  Feast  of  the  Conception :  On  Dec.  9,  t?ie  Conception  of  the  Holy 
Anne,  Mother  of  the  Mother  of  God.'    And  in  the  first  Ode  he 


434  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

writes:  '  We  to-day  celebrate,  O  Holy  Anne,  your  conceiving;  in 
that,  freed  from  the  bonds  of  sterility,  you  conceived  Her  in  your 
womb,  who  was  able  to  contain  the  Uncontainable.^ " 

But  Pusey  told  liiin  the  same  thing,  Eirenicon,  vol.  ii.,  p. 
353 :  "  The  Festival  was  at  once  the  '  Conception  of  S.  Anne  ; 
and  the  '  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Deipara.'  This  is  the  Ox- 
ford genius  who  boasted  that  he  had  to  teach  me  to  read  my 
own  authorities.  This  quotation  was  directly  before  his  eyes  in 
Pusey's  pages,  yet  he  dares  to  instruct  "  studious  churchmen '' 
that  the  feasts  are  different.  When  the  blind  thus  leads  the 
blhid,  we  know  what  happens. 

Remember  I  am  here  considering  simply  the  feast  of  the 
"  Conception  of  the  B.  Y.  Mary  "  as  it  appears  in  the  AngU- 
can  Calendar,  and  without  any  reference  whatever  to  its  im- 
maculateness.  How  did  the  feast  get  into  this  Calendar  ?  As 
we  have  seen  from  Father  Perrone,  the  Festival  of  the  Con- 
ception was  celebrated  at  an  early  period  in  the  Oriental 
Church.  The  earliest  records  call  it  either  the  Conception  of 
St.  Anne  or  the  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  But 
while  in  the  "Western  Church  the  Feast  has  been  alwavs  cele- 
brated  on  the  eighth,  in  the  East  it  was  first  observed  on  the 
ninth  of  December.  After  the  great  St.  Ansel m  had  been 
made  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  in  the  year  1093,  he  estab- 
lished the  Feast  of  the  Conception  in  his '  province,  St.  Ber- 
nard being  then  a  boy  of  eighteen. 

In  1328  a  Council  was  held  in  London  by  Simon  Mepham, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  The  result  of  its  deliberations 
was  the  Constitution  of  seven  Chapters  or  Canons,  the  second 
of  which  runs  as  follows : 

"Moreover,  because  among  all  the  saints,  the  memory  of  the 
most  blessed  Virgin  and  Mother  of  the  Lord  is  by  so  much  more 
frequently  and  solemnly  observed,  by  how  much  she  is  believed  to 
have  found  greater  favor  with  God,  who  ordained  her  predestined 
conception  for  the  temporal  origin  of  His  only  Begotten,  and  of  Him 
who  is  the  salvation  of  all ;  in  order  that  by  these  means,  the  begin- 
ning, though  remote,  of  our  salvation  (in  which  matter  for  spiritual 
joy  occurs  to  the  mind)  may  increase  devotion  in  all ; — and  follow- 
ing in  the  footsteps  of  our  predecessor,  the  venerable  Anselm,  who 
thought  it  fitting,  besides  her  other  more  ancient  solemnities,  to  add 


A  Eebutter.  435 

the  worthy  solemnity  of  her  conception ; — we  appoint  and  command 
under  strict  obligation,  that  for  the  future  the  Feast  of  the  afore- 
said Conception  be  festively  and  solenmly  celebrated  in  all  the 
churches  of  our  Province  of  Canterbury." 

Now  I  have  often  pointed  out  that  devotion  to  Mary  grows 
out  of  the  Incarnation,  as  does  the  Church  herself,  and  tliat  it 
tends  to  keep  alive  faith  in  that  crowning  act  of  the  Creator's 
love  for  us.  This  is  admitted  by  the  xVnglican  Union  lievieiOy 
in  tliese  words : 

"It  is  also  true  and  deserves  consideration,  that  there  has  been 
hitherto  no  marked  tendency  to  heresy  on  the  subject  of  the  In- 
carnation among  Roman  Catholics,  while,  where  the  dignity  of 
the  Blessed  Virgin  has  been  underrated,  heresies  have  speedily 
crept  in." 

Can  your  readers  imagine  the  present  incumbent  of  the  See 
of  Canterbury,  or  the  lute  Archbishop  Tait,  who  lived  and 
died  a  Presbyterian  at  heart,  issuing  a  decree  such  as  that  of 
their  Catholic  predecessor,  Archbishop  Mepliam,  every  word 
of  which  is  a  Te  Deum  in  lienor  of  the  Incarnation  ?  O,  no. 
Yet  the  Vicar  instructs  "studious  Churchmen,"  that  Arch- 
bisliop  Mepham  intended,  by  the  observance  of  the  Feast  of 
the  Conception,  to  direct  attention  to  the  "  remote  dawninga 
of  our  salvation,"  and  to  provide  a  more  distant  hailing  of  the 
Incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God  than  the  Feast  of  the  Annun- 
ciation supplies.  That  is  precisely  what  tliis  Catholic  Arch- 
bishop intended.  What  an  appalling  confession  on  tlie  signifi- 
cance of  a  feast  so  gloriously  celebrated  to-day  througliout  the 
Catholic  world,  but  which  is  not  even  alluded  to  in  the  Book 
of  Conunon  Prayer,  which  the  Vicar  "inadvertently"  sup- 
pressed from  the  calendar,  whicli  is  never  mentioned  in  Angli- 
can Church  or  "  Mission  Chapel "  now,  and  which  has  never 
before  been  heard  of  by  Anglicans — "  studious  "  or  otherwise 
— in  this  Pro\nnce.  Good  heaven  !  And  they  will  dare  assert, 
that  the  Anglican  Apostasy  of  to-day — the  bastard  progeny  of 
Henry's  last,  cradled  by  tlie  "  utterly  unredeemed  and  villain- 
ous "  accoucheurs^  Cranmer,  Ridley,  Latimer,  Scory  «fe  Co.— 
is  the  direct  descendant  and  heir  of  the  great  Catholic  Church 
of  pre -Reformation  times!     Shades  of  the   blessed   martyrs 


436  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ip.sum. 

Fisher  and  More— forgive  them  I  The  saintly  Catholic  Bishop, 
and  the  illustrious  Catholic  lawyer — the  Law  and  the  Prophets 
— once  more  stand  together  to  witness  to  God  and  His  Christ. 
Hallowed  be  their  sacred  memory ! 

Here  again  I  catch  the  Yicar  in  a  bare-faced  falsehood. 
He  says : 

"Even  Bellannine  admits  that  nothing  more  than  this  was  in- 
tended by  the  originators  of  the  feast." 

One  would  suppose  that  having  put  the  great  Cardinal  in 
the  "  burning  lake  "  as  a  liar,  the  Vicar  could  afford  to  be  just 
to  him.  Tliis  is  a  mistake.  He  deliberately  lies  about  liim, 
with  the  evidence  of  his  falsehood  staring  him  in  the  face  in 
Pusey's  i)ages,  Eirenicon,  vol.  2,  p.  380,  from  which  he  got 
Bellarmine's  name.     Pusey  says : 

"Bellarmine,  who  piously  beheved  in  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion, still  asserts  that  it  was  '  not  the  chief  foundation  of  the  festi- 
val '  of  the  '  Conception  of  the  B.  V.  Mary.'  " 

Here  are  Bellarmine's  words  in  full : 

"The  chief  foundation  of  this  festival  is  not  the  Immaculate 
Conception  of  her  who  was  to  be  the  Mother  of  God.  For  whatso- 
ever that  conception  may  have  been,  from  the  very  fact  that  it  was 
the  conception  of  the  Mother  of  God,  the  memory  of  it  bringeth 
singular  joy  to  the  world.  For  then  first  had  we  the  certain  pledge 
of  redemption,  especially  since,  not  without  a  miracle,  was  she  con- 
ceived of  a  barren  mother.  So  then  they  too,  who  believe  that  the 
Virgin  was  conceived  in  sin,  celebrate  this  festival." 

The  Vicar,  with  these  words  before  him,  makes  Bellarmine 
eay,  that  a  belief  in  the  Immaculate  Conception  had  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  the  festival!  Is  not  this  monstrous?  Is 
there  no  difference,  let  me  ask,  between  one  thing's  being  the 
chief  foundation  of  another,  and  the  same  thing's  forming  no 
part  of  the  foundation  ?  Does  not  Bellarmine  expressly  assert, 
that  the  belief  in  the  Immaculate  Conception  was  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Feast  of  the  Conception  in  the  minds,  at  least,  of 
those  who  accepted  that  truth  ?  To  the  extent,  then,  that  the 
Immaculate  Conception  was  received  throughout  the  Church, 
to  the  same  extent  was  it  considered  *he  foundation  of  the 


A  Rebuttek.  437 

Feast  of  the  Conception  in  England  and  elsewliere.  But  why 
need  I  argue  the  matter,  when  I  have  Bellarniine's  own  ex- 
planation of  himself,  in  a  note  on  the  same  page  of  the  Eiren- 
icon.   Bellarmine  says : 

"  There  is  a  great  dif^'tonce  between  the  Mother  of  God  and  His 
forerunner,  and  between  the  conception  of  each.  For  since  the 
greater  part  of  the  Church  piously  believe  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception, the  same  Church  had  an  occasion  for  instituting  this 
festival,  which  occasion  it  had  not  to  institute  a  festival  on  the 
conception  of  John  Baptist." 

Need  I  make  a  single  remark  upon  this?  Is  there > any 
doubt  in  Bellarmine's  mind  about  the  connection  between  the 
belief  in  the  Immaculate  Conception  and  the  institution  of 
the  Feast  of  the  Conception  ?  Of  course  not.  Pusey,  fairly 
enough,  gives  this  quotation  with  the  other.  He  proceeds  to 
remark  upon  it,  too,  in  a  way  that  witnesses  once  more  to  the 
bewildering  muddle  into  which  even  this  learned  man  could 
fall  when  he  attempted  to  handle  Catholic  theology.  In  the 
matter  under  discussion,  however,  he  honestly  stated  enough 
of  the  truth  to  enable  the  Yicar  to  avoid  a  bath  in  the  "  burn- 
ing lake."  But  he  will  not  be  saved — even  from  himself,  for 
no  sooner  do  I  exorcise  one  unclean  spirit  of  falsehood  and 
calumny,  than  he  forthwith  returns  with  a  dozen  others  of  the 
same  kidnev,  but  more  vile  and  wicked. 

One  word  more  right  here.  Anent  my  charge  that  he  sup- 
pressed the  fact  of  the  existence  of  the  Feast  of  the  "  Concep- 
tion of  the  Virgin  Mary"  in  the  Anglican  Calendar,  the 
Vicar  says : 

' '  I  can  only  suppose  he  wishes  your  readers  to  believe  that  the 
revisers  of  the  English  Prayer  Book  accepted  the  doctrine  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin." 

What  fatuity  led  this  unfortunate  man  to  draw  attention  to 
the  history  of  the  English  Book  of  Common  Prayer  ?  I  know 
it  well.  Permit  me  just  a  word  upon  it,  in  answer  to  the 
Vicar's  insinuation. 

After  the  Feast  of  Pentecost  in  1549,  the  use  of  the  book, 
as  it  came  from  the  hands  of  the  committee  of  Convocation 


488  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipscm. 

originally  appointed  with  the  sanction  of  Henry  VIII.,  be- 
came obligatory,  by  Act  of  Parliament,  on  all  ministers  of  the 
Anglican  Establishment.  Scarcely  had  it  been  launched,  when 
it  met  violent  oi)position  from  the  more  radical  school  of  re- 
formers, headed  by  Hooper,  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  and  several 
continental  Protestant  adventurers.  Among  these  were  the 
notorious  Martin  Bucer,  Peter  Martyr,  and  John  a  Lasco,  who 
had  come  to  England  after  the  accession  of  Edward  VI.,  and 
made  their  way  to  important  posts.  Calvin,  too,  urged  upon 
the  Protector  Somerset  the  necessity  of  pushing  the  Keforma- 
tion  in  England  further  than  it  had  gone.  The  result  was 
that  Edward  VI.,  the  "young  tiger-cub,"  as  Littledale  calls 
him,  declared  himself  in  favor  of  a  more  thorough  revision  of 
the  Prayer  Book.  The  infamous  Cranmer,  then  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  one  of  the  frainers  of  the  first  book,  gave  his 
consent,  and  another  committee  of  divines,  the  same  assumedly 
who  prepared  the  ordinal  of  1550,  undertook  the  preparation 
of  a  second  book,  which  was  duly  ratified  by  Parliament,  and 
came  into  use  on  All  Saints'  day,  1552.  This  is  substantially 
the  "  Book  of  Common  Prayer  "  in  use  to-day.  Your  readers 
have  seen  under  whose  inspiration  the  work  was  done.  The 
Anglican  Church  News  asserts,  that  some  of  the  revisers — 
"  Cranmer,  Ridley,  Latimer,  and  Jewell — were  apostates,  trai- 
tors, perjurers,  robbers,  and  persecutors  ";  and  Littledale,  that 
they  were  "utterly  unredeemed  villains." 

Now,  God  forbid !  that  I  should,  even  in  thought,  associate 
such  miscreants  with  either  the  Incarnation,  or  its  "  distant 
hailing ''  and  "  certain  pledge  " — the  Immaculate  Conception 
of  the  Mother  of  the  Incarnate.  They  cared  as  little  for  the 
one  as  for  the  other.  But  I  do  fearlessly  assert,  in  the  face  of 
the  Anglican  Episcopate  in  this  Dominion,  its  Deans,  Canons, 
and  Vicars,  that  the  illustrious  predecessors  of  Cranmer  in  the 
See  of  Canterbury — St.  Anselm,  who  established  the  Feast  of 
the  Conception  in  that  See,  and  Simon  Mepliam,  who  obli- 
gated its  festive  and  solemn  celebration — did  accept  the  glori- 
ous doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  Christ's  all-holy 
Mother,  and  in  testimony  of  their  belief  did  inscribe  that  feast 
in  the  calendar  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  England,  where  it  is 


A    KEBUTfEK.  439 

triumphantly  celebrated  to-day — the  Book  of  Common  Prayer, 
its  aj)08tjite  revisers,  and  "  black-letter "  calendar  to  the  con- 
trary notwithstanding. 

But  how  do  I  explain  the  fact,  that  such  men  as  these  Prot- 
estant revisers  were,  adopted  and  continued  in  their  Protestant 
calendar  this  feast  introduced  into  England  by  Catholic  Arch- 
bishops i  My  explanation  is  this :  Their  outraged  consciences 
had  made  such  cowards  of  them,  that  they  were  afraid  to  ex- 
punge from  their  country's  religious  record  this  evidence  of 
her  early  love  of  the  Woman,  who  had  been  the  Ark  and 
Tabernacle  of  the  IncarMation,  and  whose  "  predestined  Con- 
ception," in  the  words  of  Archbishop  Mepham,  "  God  had  or- 
dained for  the  temporal  origin  of  His  only  Begotten,  and  of 
Him  who  is  the  salvation  of  all."  So  the  feast  stands  in  the 
Protestant  calendar,  a  gaunt  and  awful  spectre,  a  "  black  letter 
day,"  to  be  observed  upon  by  Ritualistic  Yicars  for  "  studious 
Churchmen"  as  the  fossil  remains  of  a  behef  long  since  ex- 
tinct. The  Anglo-Ritualist  ifnion  Review  connects  the  fact 
with  its  philosophy  in  these  words : 

"A  great  deal  of  the  shrinking  felt  by  Anglicans  from  giving 
our  Lady  due  honor,  arises  from  the  lingering  effects  of  heretical 
teaching,  or  unconsciously  heretical  belief,  on  the  mystery  of  the 
Incarnation.  Nestorianism  prevails  to  a  very  great  extent  among 
English  Churchmen,  and  its  withering  effects  are  very  difTicult  to 
shake  otf ,  even  by  those  who  have  long  become  orthodox  iu  their 
theoretical  creed." 

I  come  now  to  the  Vicar's  remarks  on  St.  Bernard  touching 
the  observance  of  the  Feast  of  the  Conception.     He  says : 

' '  S.  Bernard,  however,  clearly  detected  the  dangerous  tendencies 
of  such  a  festival  in  his  day,  excessive  though  his  own  devotions 
were  to  the  Virgin,  and  he  sharply  reproved  the  Canons  of  Lyons 
for  the  unwarrantable  gi-ounds  on  which  they  admitted  and  sup- 
ported it." 

There  is  scarcely  a  word  of  truth  here — in  the  Vicar's  sense. 
Though  the  festival  in  question  had  been  established  from  an 
early  period  in  the  East,  as  we  have  seen  from  Father  Perrone, 
in  Spain  in  the  seventh,  in  Naples  in  the  ninth,  and  iu  Eng- 


440  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

land  in  the  eleventh  century,  yet  it  had  not  been  instituted  in 
Konie.  In  the  days  of  St.  Bernard,  the  Church  of  Lyons,  in 
France,  influenced  by  the  example  of  other  particular  churches 
which  had  done  the  same,  adopted  in  its  turn  the  custom  of 
celebrating  the  Feast  of  the  Conception.  Whereupon  the 
saint  addressed  a  letter  to  the  Canons  of  that  Church,  in  which 
he  reproved  them  for  taking  the  step  upon  their  own  author- 
ity, and  before  they  had  consulted  the  Holy  See.  The  whole 
scope  of  the  letter,  now  before  me,  is  to  discountenance  tiie 
introduction  of  the  feast  into  their  church  without  the  knowl- 
edge and  authority  of  Home.  Here,  are  St.  Bernard's  words, 
in  justification  of  the  reprimand : 

*'  For,  if  it  thus  seemed  proper,  the  matter  should  have  been  first 
referred  to  the  authority  of  the  Aiiostolic  See,  and  not  to  act  thus 
rashly  and  unadvisedly  on  the  simple  notions  of  a  few  unlearned 
pereons." 

It  is  true,  nevertheless,  that  St.  Jiernard  discusses  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Immaculate  Conception  by  way  of  obiter  dictum^ 
as  the  Vicar  would  say,  and  appears  to  argue  against  it.  But 
does  he  assail  what  the  Catholic  Church  to-day  understands  by 
the  Immaculate  Conception  ?  I  most  emphatically  assure  your 
Protestant  readers  that  he  does  not.  His  argument  is  directed 
against  an  idea  upon  which  the  Church  is  silent,  and  which  she 
does  not  at  all  contemplate  in  the  mystery.  This,  too,  Pusey 
discovered  in  the  case  of  St.  Thomas,  and  candidly  confessed 
in  a  letter  now  before  me.  The  Vicar  says  that  St.  Bernard's 
"  devotions  to  the  Virgin  were  excessive."  "  St.  Bernard  was 
a  very  pious  soul,  but  altogether  unreliable,"  chimes  in  Bishop 
Kingdon.  What  insolent  impertinence.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception  has  since  been  defined  by  that  very 
*'  Apostolic  See  "  to  which  this  great  saint  and  Father  of  the 
Church  referred  the  Cauons  of  Lyons.  What  would  be  his 
own  attitude  and  conduct  now,  your  readers  can  form  an  accu- 
rate judgment  from  the  concluding  words  of  his  famous  letter. 
Here  are  his  words : 

"  But  what  I  have  said  I  have  certainly  said  without  prejudice  to 
what  may  be  more  soundly  thought  by  one  more  wise.  I  reserve 
aU  this,  and  everything  else  of  the  kind,  for  the  examination  and 


A  llEBurrEK.  441 

judgment  especially  of  the  Roman  Church,  and  if  I  think  in  any- 
thing differently,  I  am  prepared  to  be  amended  by  its  judgment." 

Throughout  this  controversy,  I  have  not  diseussud  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Inunaculate  Conception ;  it  came  up  but  incident- 
ally. In  bringing  it  to  a  conclusion,  however,  I  think  it  will 
be  acceptable  to  intelligent  and  tlioughtful  Protestants  if  I 
state  just  what  the  doctrine  is,  and,  at  the  same  time,  offer  for 
their  reflection  a  few  thoughts  in  connection  with  it. 

On  the  8th  of  December,  1854,  Pius  IX.,  of  immortal  mem- 
ory, in  presence  of  a  vast  concourse  of  Catholic  bishops  who 
thronged  the  Basilica  of  St.  Peter,  solemnly  defined  tiie  Im- 
maculate Conception  of  Mary  to  be  a  dogma  of  Faith,  in  the 
following  words : 

"In  honor  of  the  Most  Holy  and  Undivided  Trinity,  for  the  gloiy 
and  ornament  of  the  Virgm  Mother  of  God,  for  the  exaltation  of 
the  Catholic  Faith  and  the  spread  of  the  Christian  i-eligion,  by  the 
authority  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  of  the  blessed  Ajxtstles  Peter 
and  Paul,  and  by  our  Own,  we  pronounce  and  define  that  the  doc- 
trine, which  maintains  that  the  Most  Blessed  Virgin  Mary  in  the 
first  moment  of  her  Conception,  was,  by  a  singular  grace  and  jirivi- 
lege  of  Almighty  God,  m  regard  of  the  merits  of  Christ  Jesus  tlie 
Saviour  of  tlie  human  race,  preserved  free  from  the  stain  of  original 
sin,  has  been  i-evealed  by  God,  and  is  therefore  to  be  firmly  and 
constantly  believed  by  all  the  faithful." 

I  am  aware,  of  course,  that  there  are  grave  theological  ideas 
involved  in  this  definition,  which  are  not  familiar  to  Protest- 
ants. They  were  not  familiar  even  to  so  learned  a  man  as 
Pusey.  I  will  therefore  lay  before  them  a  short  commentary 
upon  it  from  Cardinal  Newman's  letter  to  Pusey,  on  the  occa- 
sion of  his  Eirenicon.  The  Cardinal  addressed  his  old  and 
beloved  friend  in  these  words : 

"It  is  indeed  to  me  a  most  strange  phenomenon  that  so  many 
learned  and  devout  men  stumble  at  tliis  doctrine ;  and  I  can  only 
account  for  it  by  supposmg  that  in  n)atter  of  fact  they  do  not  know 
what  we  mean  by  the  Immaculate  Conception ;  and  your  volume 
(may  I  say  it  ?)  bears  out  my  suspicion.  It  is  a  great  consolation  to 
have  reason  for  thinking  so, — reason  for  believing  that  in  some  sort 
the  persons  in  question  are  in  the  position  of  those  great  saints  in 
former  times,  who  are  said  to  have  hesitated  about  the  doctrine, 


442  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

■when  they  would  not  have  hesitated  at  all,  if  the  word  '  Concei>- 
tion '  had  been  clearly  explained  in  that  sense  in  which  now  it  is 
universally  received.  I  do  not  see  how  any  one  who  holds  with 
(the  Anglican  Bishop)  Bull  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  supernatural 
endowments  of  our  fii-st  parents,  has  fair  reason  for  doubting  our 
doctrine  about  the  Blessed  Virgin.  It  has  no  i-eference  wliatever  ta 
her  parents,  but  simply  to  her  own  pei'son ;  it  does  but  affirm  that, 
together  with  the  nature  which  she  inherited  from  her  pai'ents,  that 
is,  her  own  nature,  she  had  a  superadded  fulness  of  grace,  and  that 
from  the  fii-st  moment  of  her  existence.  Suppose  Eve  liad  stood  the 
trial,  and  not  lost  her  first  grace;  and  suppose  she  had  eventually 
had  children,  those  children  from  the  fii"st  moment  of  their  exist- 
ence would,  through  divine  bounty,  have  received  the  same  privi- 
lege that  she  had  ever  had;  that  is,  as  she  was  taken  from  Adam's 
side,  in  a  gai-ment,  so  to  say,  of  grace,  so  they  in  turn  would  have 
received  what  may  be  ciUed  an  immaculate  conception.  They 
would  have  then  been  conceived  in  grace,  as  in  fact  they  are  con- 
ceived in  sin.  What  is  there  difficult  in  this  doctrine  ?  What  is 
there  imnatural  ?  Mary  may  be  called,  as  it  were,  a  daughter  of 
Eve  unfallen.  You  believe  with  us  that  St.  John  Baptist  had,  grace 
given  to  him  three  months  before  his  birth,  at  the  time  that  the 
Blessed  Virgin  visited  his  mother.  He  accordingly  was  not  immac- 
ulately conceived,  because  he  was  alive  before  grace  came  to  him ; 
but  our  Lady's  case  only  differs  from  his  in  this  respect,  that  to  her 
the  grace  of  God  came,  not  three  months  merely  before  her  birth, 
but  from  the  first  moment  of  her  being,  as  it  had  been  given  to 
Eve. 

"  But  it  may  be  said,  How  does  this  enable  us  to  say  that  she  was 
conceived  without  original  sin  f  If  Anglicans  knew  what  we  mean 
by  original  sin,  they  would  not  ask  the  question.  Our  doctrine  of 
original  sin  is  not  the  same  as  the  Protestant  doctrine.  '  Original 
Sin,'  with  us,  cannot  be  called  sin,  in  the  mere  orilmaiy  sense  of 
the  word  '  sin ' ;  it  is  a  term  denoting  Adam's  sin  as  transferred  to 
us,  or  the  state  to  which  Adam's  sin  reduces  his  cliildren ;  but  by 
Protestants  it  seems  to  be  understood  as  sin.  in  much  the  same  sense 
as  actual  sin.  We,  witli  tlie  Fathei-s,  think  of  it  as  something  nega- 
tive, Pi-otestants  as  something  positive.  Protestants  hold  that  it  is 
a  disease,  a  radical  change  of  nature,  an  active  poison  internally 
corrupting  the  soul,  mfocting  its  primary  elements,  and  disorgan- 
izing it ;  and  they  fancy  that  we  ascribe  a  different  nature  from 
ours  to  the  Blessed  Virgin,  different  from  that  of  her  parents,  and 
from  that  of  fallen  Adam.  We  hold  nothing  of  the  kind ;  we  con- 
sider that  m  Adam  she  died,  as  otliei-s  ;  that  she  was  included,  to- 
gether with  the  whole  race,  in  Adam's  sentence ;  that  she  incurred  his 


A  Rebuttfic.  443 

debt,  as  we  do ;  but  that  for  the  sal:e  of  Him  who  was  to  redeem  her 
and  us  upon  the  Cross,  to  her  the  debt  was  remitted  by  anticipation ; 
on  her  the  sentence  was  not  carried  out,  except  indeed  as  regards 
lier  natural  death,  for  she  died  when  her  time  came,  as  others.  All 
this  we  teach,  but  we  deny  that  she  had  original  sin;  for  by  origi- 
nal sin  we  mean,  as  I  have  already  said,  something  negative,  viz., 
this  only,  the  deprivation  of  that  supernatural,  unmerited  grace 
which  Adam  and  Eve  had  on  their  first  formation, — deprivation 
and  the  consequences  of  .  ^privation.  Mary  could  not  merit,  any 
more  than  they,  the  restoration  of  that  grace ;  but  it  was  restored  to 
her  by  God's  free  bounty,  from  the  very  fii-st  moment  of  her  exist- 
ence, and  thereby,  in  fact,  she  never  came  under  the  original  curse, 
which  consisted  in  the  loss  of  it.  And  she  had  this  special  privi- 
lege, in  order  to  fit  her  to  become  the  Mother  of  her  and  our  Re- 
deemer, to  fit  her  mentally,  spiritually  for  it ;  so  tliat,  by  the  aid  of 
the  first  grace,  she  might  so  grow  in  grace,  that,  when  the  Angel 
came  and  her  Lord  was  at  hand,  she  might  be  '  full  of  grace, '  pre- 
pared, as  far  as  a  creature  could  be  prepared,  to  receive  Him  into  her 
bosora.'' 

The  marvellous  effect  of  this  exquisite  exposition  on  Pusey's 
mind,  your  interested  readers  can  easily  ascertain  by  looking 
over  the  second  volume  of  the  Eirenicon.  I  have  already 
referred  to  it,  somewhat  at  length,  in  my  Rejoinder.  On  the 
subject  of  original  sin  Pusey  speaks  out  very  strongly.  He 
confesses  the  ignorance  of  his  own  people — "  our  people,"  he 
says — repudiates  the  doctrine  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  and  heart- 
ily proclaims  his  acceptance  of  the  Catholic  truth  as  taught  by 
the  Council  of  Trent.  But  he  goes  farther,  and  claims  that 
the  doctrine  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  "  virtually  agrees  with 
that  of  the  Council  of  Trent."  Would  to  God  that  a  consen- 
sus of  opinion  to  this  effect  could  be  brought  about  among 
"  studious  churchmen,"  bishops,  and  vicars.  We  would  then 
be  nigh  to  the  begiiming  of  the  end  of  the  Anglican  apostasy 
as  well  upon  the  Immaculate  Conception,  as  upon  other  truths 
of  Christianity.  But  what,  unfortunately,  are  the  facts  against 
Avhich  the  Catholic-minded  Pusey  so  strenuously  fought  ?  Tlie 
Vicar  introduced  Dollinger  to  your  readers  as  "the  learned 
Church  historian  and  theologian."  But  Dollinger  atlirnis  that 
"  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  are  essentially  Calvinistic," — a  fact 
the  world  knows,  Pusey's  efforts  to  minimize  its  truth  to  the 


444  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

contrary  notwithstanding.  The  repulsive  coloring,  therefore, 
which  Calvin's  heresy  has  given  to  the  notion  of  original  sin, 
and  to  other  parts  of  the  Christian  revelation  intimately  con- 
nected with  it,  has  become  the  very  web  and  woof,  so  to  speak, 
of  Anglican  theology — such  as  it  is.  It  is  only  this  infamous 
monstrosity  and  caricature  of  Christianity  that  throws  any 
serious  obstacle  in  the  way  of  an  acceptance  of  the  Catholic 
doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  Christ's  Blessed 
Mother  by  "studious  churchmen."  But  this  is  not  all  the  mis- 
chief that  Calvin's  offspring  has  done.  For  it  has  predisposed 
a  multitude  of  thoughtful  inquirers  against  the  Divine  author- 
ity of  the  Gospel  altogether.  Reason  revolts  against  the  hor- 
rible assertion,  that  the  great  Father  of  the  Universe  should, 
because  of  the  sin  of  one  of  His  creatures,  create  millions  upon 
millions  of  intelligent  beings  in  a  state  of  essential  deformity 
and  unnatural  proclivity  to  evil ;  to  say  nothing  of  the  philo- 
sophical impossibilities  which  beset  such  a  theory.  And  when 
an  anomaly  so  monstrous  is  authoritatively  identified  with  the 
Christian  faith,  it  is  no  wonder  that  private  judgment  should 
adopt  the  only  alternative  which  seems  open  to  it,  and  unhesi- 
tatingly reject  a  religious  system  that  offends  against  the  first 
principles  of  its  moral  sense.  The  London  Spectator  (June, 
1890,)  now  states  the  result :  "  The  decay  of  religion  in  Eng- 
land is  general.  Formerly,  such  religion  as  Englishmen  had 
ivas  intimately  associated  ivith  Protestantism- ;  and  as  the  lat- 
ter has  declined,  it  has  heen  replaced  hy  a  state  of  feeling 
which,  ivhateverhe  its  other  advantages,  is  near  of  kin  to  indif- 
ference to  truth  " — quoted  in  the  London  Tahlet,  June  21st, 
1890.  In  this  our  day,  I  know  of  no  triumph,  on  theological 
lines,  more  simply  glorious  for  the  Catholic  Church  than  the 
movement  for  the  Revision  of  the  Calvinistic  Creed  of  the 
famous  Westminster  Confession  of  Faith.  This  exposition  of 
Christianity  contradicts  the  dictates  of  Reason,  shocks  the  con- 
victions of  Coifscience,  and  is  subversive  of  all  Human  Dig- 
nity. "  Let  us  be  honest,  and  confess,"  writes  Dr.  Schaff,  "  that 
old  Calvinism  is  fast  dying  out."  May  God  hasten  the  day  of 
its  utter  extinction  !  I  commend  to  your  theological  readers 
the  following  recent  literature  on  this  topic,  pro  and  con  :  Dr. 


A  Rebutter.  445 

Scliaff's  Creed  Revision^  Dr.  Briggs'  Whither?;  and  Dr. 
McCosh's  Whitlier  ?  0  WJdther  ?%  Tell  me  Where  ?  a  con- 
sideration of  Dr.  Briggs'  pamphlet. 

Some  of  your  readers  may  ask  :  But  was  the  Immaculate 
Conception  not  unknown  to  the  early  ages  of  the  Church's  life  ? 
I  say — No,  not  unknown  simply,  imless  it  may  he  said  that  the 
Incarnation  itself  was  unknown  to  the  first  centuries,  and  even 
the  being  of  God.  How  many  Saints  have  used  expressions 
concerning  our  Incarnate  Lord,  which  seemed  to  deny  one  or 
other  aspect  of  the  mystery  of  His  Incarnation,  and  which,  in- 
deed, would  have  been  a  denial  of  the  truth  after  the  truth 
had  been  defined !  How  often  they  used  language  which  was 
harmless  in  them,  but  being  misused  by  others  was  laid  aside ! 
What  strange  expressions  they  used  even  of  the  Immensity 
of  God !  So  that,  as  (the  Anglican)  Bishop  Bull  reminds  us, 
they  might  even  be  convicted  of  having  erred  on  that  funda- 
mental truth.  And  so,  although  in  those  early  times  they  had 
not  sifted  the  meaning  of  their  own  expressions  nor  drawn  out 
in  careful  phrase  their  inmost  thoughts  concerning  her,  whom 
they  called  the  Second  Eve,  they  cannot  be  said  to  have  been 
strangers  to  the  truth  of  her  Immaculate  Conception. 

It  took  ages  to  settle  the  exact  equivalent  of  those  high 
thoughts  which  they  had  concerning  her,  so  that  expressions 
may  be  culled  from  the  language  of  nineteen  centuries,  whicli 
are  at  least  inexact — occasionally  contrary  to  the  truth.  It  was 
only  when  at  length  theologians  were  in  danger  of  violent  dif- 
ference that  the  subject  was  mercifully  closed,  and  by  the 
Divine  Assistance  the  infallible  head  of  the  Church  decided  in 
what  terms  the  glorious  Conception  of  our  Lady  should  hence- 
forth be  enshrined,  and  unity  thus  be  secured.  And  not  only 
was  unity  thus  secured,  but  the  Church  received  fresh  light 
for  her  growing  work.  So,  beautifully  writes  Father  lliving- 
ton,  in  Dependence^  etc. 

Your  readers  will  admit,  I  hope,  that  I  have  always  treated  my 
opponent  with  courtesy  and  nKtgnanhnity  in  the  matter  of  his 
witnesses.  For  instance,  I  have  over  and  over  again  put  in 
evidence  the  testimony  of  Dollinger,  Pusey,  Littledale,  Vercel- 
lone  and  P^rc  Gratry — witnesses  called  against  me.     Simply 


416  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

because  the  Vicar  thought  to  make  out  Father  Gratry  a  rebel 
against  the  Catholic  Church  of  which  he  Hved  and  died  a  de- 
voted son,  he  canonized  him,  and  introduced  him  to  your  read- 
ers as  the  "  Saintly  Pere  Gratry."  Thanks !  He  well  deserves 
it,  but,  if  I  must  play  the  part  of  "  Devil's  Advocate,"  not  for 
the  Vicar's  reasons.  Now  the  "  saintly  Pere  Gratry  "  was  a 
,  "  Priest  of  the  Oratory  of  the  Immaculate  Conception," — a 
society  of  priests  founded  by  himself  for  the  conversion  and 
instruction  of  the  Parisian  youth.  Your  readers,  then,  will  not 
be  surprised  to  learn  that  the  "  saintly  Pcsre  "  wrote  a  most 
beautiful  book  (now  before  me)  on  the  Immaculate  Concep- 
tion, in  which  he  looks  upon  the  definition  of  this  dogma  l)y 
Pius  IX.  as  a  most  glorious  contribution  to  our  knowledge. 
Your  readers  will  be  glad  to  hear  the  words  of  this  member  of 
the  French  Academy,  mathematician  and  philosopher  on  our 
doctrine. 

The  "  saintly  Tbre  Gratry  "  writes  : 

"O  Queen,  conceived  without  sin,  pray  for  us!  Pray  that  in 
these  our  days  the  manifestation  of  this  mystery  (i.e. ,  of  her  Immac- 
ulate Conception)  may  become  a  shining  hght  in  thy  Chui'ch.  Pray 
that  this  manifestation  may  be  such  a  progress  of  Christian  wisdom 
as  S.  Vincent  of  Lerins  speaks  of  in  the  same  pages  which  warn  the 
Christians  of  his  days  against  dangerous  novelties.  'Shall  there 
never  be,'  St.  Vincent  exclaims,  'any  religious  progi-ess  in  the 
Church  of  Christ  ?  Assuredly  there  shall  be  very  great  progress ; 
and  who  would  be  so  envious  of  man,  so  hostile  to  God  as  to  wish 
to  hhider  it  ?  Yes,  there  shall  be  progress  in  the  faitli,  but  no 
change  in  the  faith  ;  let,  then,  understanding,  knowledge,  and  wis- 
dom grow  and  develop  from  age  to  age,  both  in  the  Universal 
Church  and  in  the  individual  soul.  In  the  coui-se  of  time  the  old 
doctrines  of  the  heavenly  philosophy  must  be  more  and  more  culti- 
vf  "id  and  explained  ;  they  can  never  be  changed,  maimed,  or  muti- 
!•  .ted,  but  they  must  acqui'-e  more  clearness,  evidence,  and  precision, 
while  they  ])reserve  the  fulness,  integrity,  and  propriety  that  they 
originally  possessed.' " 

P^re  Gratry  next  quotes  from  a  pious  author,  whose  name 
he  does  not  give,  these  words : 

' '  There  are  many  reasons  why  God  willed  that  the  mystery  of 

Mary  should  dawn  by  degrees,  like  the  day One  reason,  as 

theologians  conunonly  say,  is  this  :   because  the  Church  is  not 


A  Hebuitkr.  447 

founded  on  our  Lady,  but  upon  her  Son.  Therefore  it  was  conven- 
ient that  God  should  fli-st  make  clear  the  truths  of  salvation,  and 
afterwards  in  the  superabundance  of  His  goodness  should  clear  up 
ethers,  which,  thougrh  of  less  consequence,  yet  raise  our  minds  to 
know  him  better  and  to  love  him  more  ai-dently." 

And  tlie  Vicar's  "  saint "  thus  concludes  his  philosophic 
reflections : 

"The  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Virgin  is  a  truth  so  deep,  so 
fundamental,  and  so  central  ;  it  throws  so  strong  a  light  on  all  the 
trutlis  of  faith,  and  even  on  all  the  truths  of  philosophy,  that  its 
fuller  manifestation  will  perhaps  contribute  to  bring  about  that 
intellectual  revolution  in  the  Christian  world  and  in  the  human 
mmd  which  clear-sighted  souls  are  looking  for." 

I  have  adopted  Father  Rivington's  translation  of  these  ex- 
tracts :  they  will  give  your  readers  some  idea  of  the  enthusi- 
asm with  which  this  "saintly"  Christian  philosopher  greeted 
the  final  settlement  of  the  question  as  to  the  relation  between 
the  first  and  Second  Eve — as  the  Fathers  call  Mary. 

"  The  saintly  Pere  Gratry,"  "  the  good  priests  of  Portland 
and  the  Cathedral,"  says  the  Vicar  in  one  breath,  while  in  the 
next  breath  he  accuses  them  of  being  guilty  of  "extrava- 
gances," "enormities,"  "impious  utterances,"  "impious  acts  of 
worship  and  prayer,"  "  idolatrous  devotions,"  and  "  idolatrous 
worship,"  toward  the  ever-blessed  Mother  of  his  and  their 
Redeemer !     The  cowardly  and  insolent  hypocrite. 

I  will  now  submit  to  your  readers  the  testimony 'of  two  very 
different  witnesses, — the  leaders  of  the  two  greatest  revolts 
against  the  Church  of  God, — Mahomet  and  Martin  Luther. 
They  represent  the  sixth  century  and  the  sixteenth,  rnd  they 
have  received  and  refiected,  each  in  his  pecuh'ar  way,  the  tra- 
dition of  the  Church  on  tlie  Immacuhite  Conce])tion. 

My  references  will  be  to  Davenport's  edition  of  Sale's  trans- 
lation of  The  Koran,  Philadelphia,  18G4,  now  before  me. 

It  is  well  known  that  Mahomet,  during  the  cotnmercial 
period  of  his  life,  conversed  with  Christians  on  their  doctrines, 
especially  in  iiis  visits  to  the  great  fair  of  Bosra,  which  brought 
people  together  from  all  parts  of  the  East.  In  various  parts 
of  the  Koran  he  has  inserted  fragments  of  Christian  teaching. 


448  Ip8k,  Ipsa,  Ii'sum. 

colored  with  his  own  fancies.  And,  amongst  the  Christian 
traditions  which  he  thus  got  hold  of,  was  that  of  the  Innnacu- 
late  Conception,  The  passage  to  which  I  desire  to  call  atten- 
tion is  to  be  found  in  the  third  chapter  of  the  Koran,  which 
is  entitled,  The  Family  of  hnran.  Imran,  or  Ainran,  accord- 
ing to  the  Mohammedan  commentators,  is  the  husband  of 
Anna,  and  the  father  of  Mary — it  is  another  name  for  St, 
Joachim.     Here  are  Mahomet's  words : 

"God  hath  surely  chosen  Adam,  and  Noah,  and  the  family  of 
Abraham,  and  the  family  of  Imran,  above  the  rest  of  the  world ;  a 
race  descending  the  one  from  the  other;  God  is  He  who  heareth  and 
knoweth.  Remember,  when  the  wife  of  Imran  (Anna)  said,  Lord, 
I  have  vowed  unto  thee  that  which  is  in  my  womb,  to  be  dedicated 
to  thy  service ;  accept  it  therefore  of  me,  for  thou  art  He  who  hear- 
eth and  knoweth.  And  when  she  was  delivered  of  it,  she  said.  Lord, 
verily  I  have  brought  forth  a  female  (and  God  well  knew  what  she 
had  brought  forth),  and  a  male  is  not  as  a  female  (because  the  latter 
could  not  minister  in  the  temple) ;  I  have  called  her  Mary,  and  I 
commend  her  to  thy  protection,  and  also  her  issue,  against  Satan, 
driven  away  with  stones.  Therefore  the  Lord  accepted  her  with  a 
gracious  acceptance,  and  caused  her  to  bear  an  excellent  offspring." 

Your  readers  will  find  this  passage  fully  explained  by  Mo- 
hammedan commentators  in  the  notes  to  Sale's  Koran.  Sale 
himself  suras  them  up  in  these  words : 

"It  is  not  improbable  that  the  pretended  Immaculate  Conception 
of  the  Virgin  Mary  is  intimated  in  this  passage.  For  according  to 
a  tradition  of  Mohammed,  every  person  that  comes  into  the  world  is 
touched  at  his  birth  by  the  devil,  and  therefore  cries  out,  Mary  and 
her  son  only  excepted  ;  between  whom  and  the  evil  spirit  God 
placed  a  veil,  so  that  his  touch  did  not  reach  them.  And  for  this 
reason,  they  say,  neither  of  them  was  guilty  of  any  sm,  like  the 
rest  of  the  children  of  Adam.  Which  peculiar  grace  they  obtained 
by  virtue  of  this  recommendation  of  them  by  Hannah  to  God's  pro- 
tection." 

The  Koran  proceeds  to  say  that  Mary,  under  the  care  of 
Zacharias,  was  placed  in  a  chamber  of  the  temple.  It  then 
narrates  the  miraculous  birth  of  St.  John  the  Baptist,  whom  it 
calls  an  honorable,  chaste,  and  righteous  prophet,  who  should 
bear  witness  to  the  word  from  God.     It  then  adds:   "The 


A  Rebutter.  449 

Angels  said,  O  Mary,  verily  God  hath  chosen  thee,  and  hath 
purified  thee,  and  hath  chosen  thee  above  all  the  women  of  the 
world :  O  Mary,  be  devout  towards  thy  Lord,  and  worship  and 
bow  down  with  those  that  bow  down." 

Now  the  respect  which  Mahomet  and  his  followers  have 
always  expressed  towards  the  Blessed  Virgin,  and  which  should 
put  many  to  shame  who  profess  themselves  Christians,  is  the 
more  remarkable  when  we  consider  their  notions  respecting 
the  rest  of  her  sex,  opinions  as  disgraceful  as  they  are  degrad- 
ing, and  which  tend  to  show  that  theoretical  opinions  concern- 
ing Mary  are  of  no  avail,  unless  in  those  Christian  hearts  wliich 
separate  her  not  from  Jesus,  and  truly  honor  her  as  the  Mother 
of  God.  The  "sermon "  preached  by  the  Vicar  after  this  dis- 
cussion had  long  continued,  is  a  good  illustration  of  such  theo- 
retical opinions  :  it  had  nothing  but  words. 

In  his  great  work,  Bihliotheque  Orientale,  D'Herbelot  tolls 
the  following  anecdote,  which  illustrates  the  Mohammedan 
opinion  of  Mary, 

Abou  Ishac,  one  of  the  most  famous  doctors  of  Mohammedan- 
ism, was  ambassador  from  the  Caliph,  at  the  court  of  the  Greek 
Emperor.  There  he  had  warm  disputes  on  the  subject  of  relig- 
ion with  the  Greek  Patriarch  and  several  bishops.  The  bish- 
ops had  quoted  sundry  reflections  made  by  Mohammedans  to 
the  disadvantage  of  Ayesha,  the  wife  and  widow  of  the  false 
prophet.  Abou  Ishac  replied,  by  drawing  a  picture  of  the 
divisions  in  the  East  respecting  our  Lord's  Incarnation  ;  how 
some  said  that  the  Holy  Virgin  brought  forth,  some  said  she 
did  not  bring  forth,  some  said  they  knew  not  whether  she  did 
or  not.  He  then  concluded  with  this  appeal  to  the  Bishops : 
"  How  can  you  be  surprised  that  Mohammedans  have  differed 
about  Ayesha,  since  Christians  have  differed  about  that  glori- 
ous Virgin  Mary,  who  was  a  mine  and  a  fountain  of  purity." 
See  Bishop  Ullathorne's  beautiful '"'' Exjposition  of  the  Immac- 
ulate Conception^ 

I  will  now  call  attention  to  a  passage  in  Luther's  Kirchcn- 
jpostill  (Opera,  ed.  Walch.,  Haliae  1Y45 ;  xi.  2616),  which  runs 
as  follows : 

"As  other  men  were  conceived  in  sin,  both  in  soul  and  body,  but 


450  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsdm. 

Christ  without  sin,  either  in  body  or  soul ;  so  Mary  the  Virgin  was 
conceived  according  to  the  body  indeed  without  grace,  but  accord- 
ing to  the  soul  full  of  grace.  Such  is  the  meaning  of  these  words 
which  the  Angel  Gabriel  spoke  to  her,  '  Blessed  art  thou  amongst 
women.''  For  it  could  not  have  been  said  of  her,  '^  Blessed  art  thou,^ 
if  she  had  ever  been  under  the  curse.  It  was  also  right  and  just 
that  that  person  should  be  preserved  without  sin,  from  whom  Christ 
was  to  take  the  flesh  that  should  overcome  all  sin.  For  that  is 
properly  called  '  Blessed,^  which  is  endowed  with  God's  grace,  that 
is,  which  is  without  sin.  Of  this  matter  others  have  written  more 
at  length,  and  adduced  excellent  reasons  which  it  would  be  too  long 
here  to  relate." 

i 

So  wrote  Martin  Luther  in  1527,  or  ten  years  after  his  fall- 
ing away  from  the  Catholic  Church,  thus  showing  how  strong 
and  general  was  the  general  belief  on  the  doctrine  of  the  Im- 
maculate Conception  in  Christendom  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
just  as  Mohammed's  testimony  (he  was  born  A.D.  570)  shows 
the  same  fact  for  the  sixth  century. 

Three  hundred  and  twenty-seven  years  after  Luther  had  so 
clearly  and  strongly  affirmed  his  belief  in  the  Immaculate  Con- 
ception, the  solemn  definition  of  the  doctrine  by  Pius  IX.  was 
greeted  with  clamors  and  cries  from  the  enfeebled  sects  of 
German  Protestantism.  Thereupon  German  RationaHsni 
charged  Protestant  evangelicalism  with  its  inconsistencies,  as 
exhibited  in  these  outcries  against  the  definition.  The  German 
Protestant  Ecclesiastical  Gazette,  of  December  9th,  1854,  re- 
monstrates with  it  in  these  words : 

"Why  all  this  clamor  on  thfl  part  of  orthodox  Protestants?  This 
belief  is  but  the  necessary  and  very  natural  consequence  of  their 
own  prmciples,  and  it  is  surprising  that  the  definition  did  not  take 
place  sooner,  and  that  orthodox  Protestantism  had  not  long  smce 

proclaimed  it The  roots  of  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate 

Conception  of  Mary  extend  in  fact  into  the  very  depth  of  the  sub- 
stance of  their  own  dogmatic  system,  and  show  both  the  weak  sides 
and  the  corruption  of  the  Evangelical  Church.  In  substance  it  is  a 
question  on  the  historical  fact  of  the  holy  and  immaculate  personal- 
ity of  Jesus  Christ If  they  are  not  disposed  to  revise  from 

top  to  bottom  the  theory  of  original  sin,  and  our  orthodox  now 
desire  it  less  than  ever,  there  is  no  other  part  to  take  but  to  imitate 
the  Catholics,  and  to  deny  the  influence  of  original  sin  on  the 


A  IIebuttkb.  451 

human  nature  of  Christ;  this  will  also  lead  to  the  liherating  of  His 
Mother,  that  is  to  the  asserting  that  she  was  conceived  without  orig- 
inal stain.  This  is  what  the  Roman  Church  has  done  in  our  days, 
not  arbitrarily,  but  pushed  on  by  the  foi-ce  of  a  necessary  conse- 
quence. Thus  it  is  not  possible  that  Rome  could  refuse  her  sanction 
to  the  dogma  of  the  Immaculate  Conception.  These  things  seem  at 
this  moment  to  have  no  direct  influence  on  the  Evangelical  Church, 
but  before  long  we  shall  see  the  theologians  of  orthodox  Protestant- 
ism driven  at  last  to  the  necessity  of  acknowledging  what  is  con- 
tained in  their  own  principles,  of  which  the  Roman  Clmrch  has 
done  nothing  but  recognize  a  consequence,  and  sooner  or  later  it 
will  bring  the  orthodox  to  venerate  the  Virgin." 

And  now  I  will  adapt  and  apply  to  the  Vicar,  as  the  repre- 
sentative and  embodiment,  in  this  community,  of  the  miser- 
able fraud  of  Ritualism,  the  scathing  parallel  of  the  great-hearted 
Marshall, — himself  a  learned  convert  from  Anglicanism  to  the 
Catholic  Church.     lie  truly  says : 

"  One  point  of  difference  there  is  between  (the  Rationalist  and  the 
Ritualist),  and  only  one.  The  Rationalist  denies  tliat  the  creature 
owes  obedience  to  any  spiritual  authority  whatever,  the  Ritualist 
that  he  owes  it  to  any  but  the  '  Primitive  Church.'  Refusing  his 
homage  to  the  living  spouse  of  Christ,  he  hopes  to  escape  being 
counted  among  the  lawless  by  professing  filial  adhesion  to  the  same 
spouse  BEFORE  she  became  impure  and  defiled.  He  displays  his 
reverence  for  her  who  is  '  without  spot,  or  wrinkle,  or  any  such 
thing, '  by  asserting  that  she  lost  all  title  to  reverence  before  she  had 
begun  to  convert  the  barbai'ians,  or  to  civilize  all  the  Kingdoms  of 
Europe.  Yet  the  Christian  who  palliates  his  revolt  against  her  by 
the  plea  that  he  is  loyal  to  an  older  authority,  which  he  calls  the 
Primitive  or  Undivided  Church,  only  resembles  the  citizen  who 
should  contend,  as  a  pretext  for  rejecting  the  Common  Law  of  Eng- 
land, that  his  entire  submission  is  reserved  for  the  decrees  of  the 
Witenagemote,  or  the  precepts  of  the  Justinian  Code.  And  the 
answer  of  the  judge  would  be  the  same  in  both  cases.  The  author- 
ity by  which  the  Divine  Lawgiver  tests  human  obedience,  till  the 
second  coming  of  Christ,  is  not  one  which  expired  a  thousand  or 
fifteen  hundred  years  ago,  but  which,  like  Himself,  is  '  the  same 
yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever.'' 

"  I  know  not  if  the  Rationalist  aspires  to  heaven,  or  even  believes 
in  its  existence.  If  he  does,  he  probably  expects  that  his  chief  em- 
ployment there  will  be  to  make  further  discoveries  in  chemistry  or 
astronomy,  or  perhaps  to  give  lectures  to  the  Angels  on  those  interest- 


452  Ipse,  Ipsa,  Ipsum. 

ing  subjects.  The  Ritualist  certainly  believes  in  heaven,  and  Avill 
display  there  also,  if  its  gates  should  be  opened  to  him,  hia  essential 
agreement  with  the  Rationalist.  While  tlie  latter  will  be  a  scien- 
tific missionai'y  to  the  Angels,  the  former  will  be  a  theological  mis- 
sionary to  the  Saints.  Thus  he  will  represent  to  St.  Peter,  if  the 
opportunity  should  occur,  that  if  he  had  only  disclaimed  all  per- 
sonal ]ire-eminence,  and  forbidden  others  to  assume  it,  the  fiction  of 
Papal  supremacy,  for  which  he  is  clearly  responsible,  could  never 
have  been  established.  He  will  observe  to  St.  Paul,  if  he  can  per- 
suade him  to  listen  to  him,  that  his  intemperate  injunctions  about 
dogmatic  unity  were  excessive,  and  since  they  could  not  at  any 
time  have  been  complied  with  in  the  Chuix;h  of  England,  there  can 
be  no  clearer  proof  that  they  were  erroneous.  He  will  reprove  St. 
John,  if  he  is  not  too  far  removed  from  him  to  do  so,  for  his  extrav- 
agant doctrine,  that  whosoever  consorts  with  a  heretic  '  communi- 
cated with  his  wicked  works'  Anglicans  did  it  every  day,  which 
proves  that  it  was  lawful  and  right.  He  will  severely  upbraid  St. 
Augustine.  Avho  merely  asked  the  Pope's  permission  before  he  came 
to  convert  England ;  and  St.  Boniface,  who  culpably  swoi-e  to  obey 
him  before  he  went  to  evangelize  Germany.  He  will  frown  upon 
St.  Bernard,  always  supposing  that  he  finds  himself  in  his  company 
(on  account  of  '  his  excessive  devotions  to  the  Virgin ') ;  and  turn 
his  back  on  St.  Anselm  (who,  as  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  intro- 
duced the  Feast  of  the  Conception  of  Christ's  Blessed  Mother  into 
England),  and  whose  language  on  the  same  subject  is  unworthy  of 
a  pi-edecessor  of  (Cranmer  and)  Parker,  Tait  (and  Dr.  Benson,  the 
present  incumbent  of  St.  Anselm's  See).  He  will  decline  to  speak  to 
Sir  Thomas  More,  wiio  died  rather  than  revolt  against  the  Pope,  a 
weakness  discreditable  to  a  patriotic  and  enlightened  Englishman. 
And  thus,  truths  previously  unknown,  save  in  the  British  Isles  and 
their  favored  dependencies,  will  be  gradually  diffused  throughout 
Heaven,  to  the  great  profit  and  jubilation  of  the  hitherto  unin- 
structed  Saints.  Amid  such  duties  and  occupations,  perfectly  , 
adapted  to  (his)  previous  habits  (the  'Mission  Church'  Thersites) 
hopes  to  enjoy  a  cheerful  eternity." 

Here,  for  the  present,  I  take  leave  of  this  Yiear, — the  veriest 
ritualistic  Tbeocrines.  I  have  for  the  unfortunate  man  no 
other  feehngs  but  ''pity  and  ruth."  "If  he  seek  truth,  is  he 
not  our  brother  and  to  be  pitied  ?  If  he  do  not  seek  truth,  is 
he  not  still  our  brother  and  to  be  pitied  still  more  ? "  I  have 
shot  across  the  inner  crust  of  his  malicious  soul,  gleams  of  radi- 
ance from  Catholic  truth  amply  sufficient  to  guide  him  out  of 


A  Rebutteb.  453 

his  labyrinthine  prison.  Let  liiin  now  remember  that  liis  own 
Jeremy  Taylor  warns  him,  that  whoever  sins  against  light 
Icisses  the  lips  of  a  blazing  cannon  ;  and  let  him  not  he  indif- 
ferent, in  his  examination  of  conscience,  to  his  present  mental 
condition,  which  Shakespeare,  with  prophetic  vision,  seems  to 
have  had  in  his  eye  when  he  peimed  these  words : 

"  But  when  we  in  our  viciousness  grow  hard, 
The  wise  gods  seal  our  eyes  ; 

In  our  own  slime  drop  our  clear  judgment,  make  us 
Adore  our  errors ;  laugh  at  us  while  we  strut 
To  our  confusion." 

And,  finally,  a  word  to  Bishop  Kingdon.  I  would  ask  him 
whether  he  thinks  he  has  either  promoted  the  dignity,  or  hon- 
ored and  discharged  the  responsibilities  of  his  position  as  a 
"  Teacher  in  Israel "  by  imposing  upon  such  a  Vicar  the  task 
of  handling  controversially  such  topics  as  have  engaged  our 
attention  in  this  discussion  ?  If,  however,  he  thinks  that  he 
himself  can  do  it  any  better,  it  is  surely  his  duty  to  buckle  on 
his  armor.  He  has  allowed  his  Vicar  to  overlay  with  every 
species  of  insult,  falsehood,  and  calumny  against  the  Catholic 
Church,  his  miserable  statement  that  Ipsa  was  a  misprint  for 
Ipse,  and  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate  Concejjtion  was 
founded  upon  and  depended  on  this  misprint.  I  have  held  up 
this  statement  to  the  breezes  that  blow  out  of  all  quarters  of 
the  sky  of  Catholic  theology ;  I  have  held  it  up  to  the  winds 
that  blow  from  the  pages  of  the  loftiest  mountain-peaks  of 
Catholic  scholarship,  Biblical  and  Patristic,  and  I  have  thrown 
in  the  mighty  Protestant  names  of  Grotius  and  Tischendorf. 
What  is  the  result  \  The  hUzzard  has  so  winnowed  the  state- 
ment that  nothing  of  it  is  left  but  a  "damned  spot"  on  the 
reputation  of  Bishop  Kingdon  as  a  scholar  and  theologian, 
which  will  not  "  out  "  by  all  the  infamous  "  perfumes  '^applied 
by  his  Vicar,  and  which  nothing  can  purge  away  but  an  hon- 
est confession  of  mistake  with  an  honorable  retraction  and 
apology. 

I  closed  my  first  letter  with  the  words  used,  on  an  ever 
memorable  occasion,  by  the  famous  John  Duns  Scotus,  the 
immortal  Franciscan  monk,  and  genuine  Oxford  scholar.     He 


454  Ii«8K,  Ipsa,  Ipbum. 

uttered  thciu  in  the  University  of  Paris,  whitLer  he  was  called 
from  Oxford,  when,  in  presence  of  the  assembled  glories  of 
contemporary  science  and  genius,  he  so  resolved  two  hundred 
arguments  on  the  Immaculate  Conception  that  he  went  forth 
from  the  lists  with  the  title  of  Victorious.  In  that  great  con- 
test of  giants,  he  not  only  determined  the  future  teaching  of 
the  Paris  faculty,  but  he  gathered  to  his  side  all  the  famous 
Universities  of  Europe.  Even  Pusey  concedes  that  Scotus' 
"  answers  to  the  abstract  arguments"  are  "  invincible." 

I  caimot  better  conclude  this  discussion  than  in  the  words  of 
a  genius  mightier  than  Shakespeare.  In  the  33d  Canto  of  the 
Paradiso,  Dante  opens  with  the  following  magnificent  prayer 
of  St.  Bernard  to  the  Blessed  Mother,  on  behalf  of  the  Poet 
liimself,  who,  guided  by  Beatrice,  is  present  and  longs  to  look 
even  to  the  throne  of  God : 

O !  Virgin  Mother,  of  thy  Son  a  child, 

Most  Immble,  yet  above  all  others  great; 
In  Wisdom's  depths  fixed  object  uudefiled : 

Thou  who,  with  wondrous  gifts,  didst  elevate 
Man's  nature  so,  that  God  approving  smiled 

Disdainirtg  not  with  human  flesh  to  mate. 
Again  was  lit  within  thy  virgin  breast 

The  Maker's  love ;  by  its  sweet  ray,  like  flowers, 
These  souls  are  born  into  eternal  rest. 

Thou  ai-t,  of  Charity,  in  heavenly  bowers, 
Meridian  beam ;  below,  the  fountain  blest 

Of  loving  hope  in  mankind's  darkest  hours. 
So  great  the  power  that  from  thy  greatness  springs 

0 1  Lady  high,  that  he,  who  in  his  need, 
Seeks  not  thy  help,  would  soar  bereft  of  wings.  ' 

Nor  dost  thou  always  stay  a  gracious  deed 
Until  invoked ;  oft  in  dubious  things 

Thou  dost  forestall  a  wish  with  loving  speed. 
In  thee  bright  Mercy,  and  sweet  Pity  shine ; 

In  thee  Magnificence ;  in  thee  are  knit 
What  shreds  there  are  in  others  of  divine. 

Wherefore  this  man,  who  from  hell's  lowest  pit 
E'en  to  this  place,  has  seen  in  ordered  line, 

The  spirit  world,  now  prays  tliat  thou  wouldst  fit, 
By  grace  from  God  obtained,  his  mortal  eye, 

To  gazt'  aloft,  unto  the  awful  throne 


A  IlKDU'riEK.  455 

Of  Him  the  source  of  perfect  bliss  Most  High. 

And  I,  who  never  favor  of  my  own 
More  fervent  sought  tlian  this,  raise  up  my  cry 

To  thee,  (and  may  it  not  in  vain  be  throw^n) 
That  frail  mortality's  encircling  cloud 

Thou  wouldfet  with  prayers  dissolve,  so  to  his  gaze 
Tlie  cause  of  bliss  might  now  his  face  unshroud. 

Lady,  who  canst,  in  God's  mysterious  ways. 
Thy  every  wish  obtain,  preserve,  I  ask, 

From  ill,  the  senses  that  such  things  have  seen : 
To  quell  his  human  pride,  be  thine  the  task ; 

Behold,  Beatrice  prays  to  thee,  O !  Queen, 
And  many  Saints  with  outstretched  hands  for  this. 

(Archbishop  O'Brien's  Translation.) 

Ever  sincerely  yours, 

R.  F.  QUIGLEY. 


APPENDIX     A. 

•  LETTER  FROM  BISHOP  ROGERS. 

THE  LATE  ARCHBISHOP  CONNOLLY. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Globe : 

Sir,— May  I  again  ask  the  kind  hospitality  of  your  valuable 
paper?    In  the  spring  of  1885  (Globe  of  the  19th  March,  17th  April, 
and  9tli  May),  you  granted  me  the  use  of  your  columns  to  correct, 
over  the  signature  "  Veritas,"  some  erroneous  impressions  which  the 
letters  of  the  Rev.  J.  M.  Davenport,  Ritualist  Anglican  minister  of 
the  Mission  Church,  St.  Jolni,  writing  over  the  noin  de  plume 
"Catholic,"  were  calculated  to  produce  in  regard  to  the  late  Most 
Rev.  Archbishop  Connolly.     I  then  stated,  in  substance,  that  the 
said  illustrious  Archbishop  of  Halifax  (formerlv  Bishop  of  St.  John), 
when  called  to  the  duty  of  participating  in  the  deliberations  of  tlie 
(Ecumenical  Council  of  the  Vatican,  fully  undei-stood  and  faithfully 
discharged  the  responsibility  of  his  office  as  a  Bishop  of  the  church 
at  that  council,  in  exercising  his  right  witli  apostolic  liberty,  yet  so 
as  not  to  derogate  from  the  rights  of  others,  whether  equals  or  supe- 
rior, during  the  trying  period  of  the  council's  deliberations.     I  say 
trying  period;  for  it  is  the  conscientious  duty  of  each  one,  during 
the  proper  period  of  deliberation,  to  express  candidly  and  clearly  his 
views,  even  though  it  may  be  painfully  evident  that  his  views  differ 
from  the  majority  of     s  colleagues  and  from  those  of  the  Sovereign 
Pontiff.    Then,  when      <?  period  of  deliberation  is  ended,  it  becomes 
the  duty  of  all  to  acquiesce  in  th(   ^nal  decision  when  approved  by 
the  Pope;  that  is,  to  "  Hear  the  Church,"  in  submitting  one's  own 
particular  will  and  judgment  to  the  decision  and  judgment  of  tlie 
higher  autliority  which  God  has  ai)pointed  to  guide  and  govern  us. 
Is  tliere  anytliing  wrong  or  abnormal   in  tliis?     In   temporal 
affairs,  in  councils  of  State  as  well  as  in  churcli  matters,  is  not  this 
the  correct  rule  and  jM-actice?  and  in  so  acting  at  the  Vatican  Coun- 
cil did  not  Archbisho])  ComioUy  and  the  other  Bisliops  of  the  so-called 
"  minority  "  act  correctly?    Evidently  Rev.  Mr.  Davenport  flunks 
not.    Like  his  preference  for  the  forged  and  repudiated  speech  of 
Bishop  Strossmayer  t^does  he  also  admire  Pigot's  forgeries,  "  Par- 
nellism  and  Crime  "?),  he  seems  to  prefer  that  Archbishop  Connolly 

(457) 


458  Appendix. 

should  have  rejected,  as  he  himself  does,  the  decisions  of  the  Catho- 
lic Church,  even  while  retaining  the  name  "Catholic." 

But,  to  the  point  of  my  letter.  I  wish  in  no  way  to  obtrude  my- 
self into  the  controversy  between  the  Rev.  Mr.  Davenport  and  Mr. 
R.  F.  Quigley  in  the  matter  ''  Ipse,  Ipsa";  for  I  had  nothing  to  do 
with  it  from  the  beginning,  except,  after  it  began,  to  follow  with 
admiring  sympathy  Mr.  Quigley's  irrefragable  arguments  and  sound 
erudition.  Both  antagonists  are  valiant  champions.  But  I  wish  to 
protest,  as  earnestly  as  it  is  possible,  against  the  forgery  of  a  libellous 
calumny  as  stated  in  Mr.  Davenpoit's  letter  in  your  issue  of  the  18th 
inst.,  in  reference  to  Archbishop  Connolly  at  the  Vatican  Council. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Davenport  writes :  "  I  will  quote  a  letter  which  I 
myself  received  from  Dr.  Nevin,  Priest  of  the  American  church  of 
St.  Paul  ill  Rome,  dated  December  4,  1885,  acknowledging  receipt 
of  my  pamphlet  on  Pupal  Infallibility.  '  You  are  quite  in  the  right,' 
he  says,  '  about  Archbishop  Connolly He  was  on  one  occa- 
sion pulled  down  from  the  sort  of  pulpit  in  which  the  speal-trs 
stood,  after  they  had  tried  in  vain  to  silence  him  with  cries  of  silen- 
tium  hereticus.  He  described  this  scejie  to  me  the  same  evening  iu 
the  presence  of  several  membei's  of  the  Council.  Then  when  lie 
would  not  yield  to  the  cries  with  which  they  attempted  to  silence 
him,  there  was  no  end  of  a  row, '  said  the  Archbishop,  '  and  I  was 
got  down  out  of  that  mighty  quick.' " 

Now  from  my  own  personal  knowlBdge  I  pronounce  this  statement 
to  be  utterly  void  of  truth.  I  was  pref&nt  as  well  as  Bishop  Sweeny  of 
St.  John,  Bishop  Mclntyre  of  Ch:;rlottetown,  P.  E.  I.,  and  many 
other  living  Bishops  to  whom  I  can  appeal,  at  each  of  the  speeches 
made  by  Archbishop  Connolly  in  the  hall  of  the  Vatican  Council,  and 
no  such  occurrence  as  is  here  stated  ever  took  place  in  regard  to  him, 
nor  indeed  in  regard  to  any  other,  but  I  speak  emphatically  of  him. 
Nor  could  he  have  made  such  a  statement  to  Dr.  Nevin.  It  would 
be  untrue  and  absui-d.  Archbishop  Connolly  and  the  priest  who  was 
liis  secretaiy,  Bishop  Sweeny,  and  myself  clubbed  and  messed  together 
during  our  stay  in  Rome  foi-  the  Council,  like  many  other  groups  of 
Bishops.  We  occupied  a  suite  of  apartments  on  the  same  flat  or 
piazza,  each  having  his  own  separate  room,  but  our  dining  room,  re- 
pa.sts,  recreation  room,  parlor,  temporary  altar  for  mass,  carriage  for 
going  to  the  daily  meetings  of  the  Bishops,  and  servants,  were  in  com- 
mon, and  nothing  of  any  importance  could  happen  to  any  one  of  us 
without  its  becoming  known  to  the  others.  Hence,  I  know  whereof 
I  speak,  and  I  make  this  statement  simply  iu  the  interests  of  truth 
and  justice,  not  in  any  spirit  of  carping  coiitrovei"sy. 

Thanking  you,  Mr.  Editor,  I  remain,  etc., 

t  J-  Rogers.  Bis'  .p  of  Chatham. 


Appendix.  459 


APPENDIX      B. 

BISHOP  STROSSMAYER'S  LETTER  TO  BISHOP  MAES. 

Right  Rev.  and  Illustrious  Bishop:  Most  Beloved  Brother  in 
Christ: 

I  reply  to  your  two  letters  informing  me  that  various  things 
under  my  name,  prejudicial  to  the  Catholic  faith  and  Church,  are 
circulated  in  your  country.  Every  one  of  the  pieces  circulated  and 
published  in  your  country  in  my  name,  prejudicial  to  the  Catliolic 
Church  and  faith,  are  malignant  inventions;  are  lies,  are  calum- 
nies, concocted  at  the  instif^-ation  of  him  who  goeth  about  the  flock 
of  the  Lord  seeking  whom  he  may  devour.  I  deem  it  my  glory,  and 
I  regard  it  as  one  of  the  chief  gifts  of  Divine  goodness,  that  I  was 
born  of  pious  Catholic  parents  and  brought  up  by  them,  and  have 
all  my  life  constantly  adhei-ed  to  the  Catholic  faith.  It  is  almost 
sixty  years  since  I  was  ordained  priest,  and  for  forty  years  I  have 
belonged  to  the  episcopate ;  all  this  time  I  have  openly  and  publicly 
taught  and  explained  the  whole  uncorrupted  Catholic  doctrine  ac- 
cording to  the  sense  of  Mother  Church.  This  is  attested  by  almost 
numberless  documents,  most  of  them  public  and  official.  It  gives 
me  great  gi  '  and  sadness  of  mind  that  men  can  be  found  so  giddy 
and  perveree  as  to  dai-e  to  abuse  my  name  and  authority,  in  order 
to  seduce  souls  redeemed  by  the  blood  of  Christ  and  called  to  the 
hope  of  immortality,  and  wrest  them  from  the  Catholic  Church. 

Soon  after  the  Vatican  Council  a  sermon  was  published,  purport- 
ing to  have  been  delivered  by  me,  which  teemed  throughout  with 
insults  and  contumely  against  the  Catholic  faith  and  Church.  I 
have  t'gain  and  again  in  private  and  public  denounced  this  impious 
and  mcst  sacrilegious  sermon  as  ajKwryphal,  falsely  and  menda- 
ciously asci'ibed  to  my  mouth  and  my  name ;  but  the  impious  fraud 
and  forgery  devised  for  the  destruction  of  souls  has  not  yet  ceased. 
At  last,  however,  I  was  informed  by  a  certain  pious  American 
priest  and  onfcssor  that  he  had  attended  an  apostate  priest  who  on 
his  deathbed  confessed  that  he  was  the  author  of  the  above-men- 
tioned fraud  and  forgery,  and  had  ascribed  the  stiid  imiiious  .ser- 
mon to  me ;  he  added  entreaties  that  as  a  sign  of  final  repentance 
and  expiation  this  should  be  communicated  to  me  and  my  pardon 
obtained.  All  this  I  made  known  at  Rome  and  published  widely, 
and  the  storm  against  me  was  somewhat  lulled  for  a  time. 

By  your  letters,  dearest  brother,  I  .see  that  the  old  enemies  of  the 
Catholic  faith  and  Church  have  retui'ned  to  their  vomit,  and,  as  the 
prophet  says,  "  become  an  outspread  net  for  the  faithful  people.''    I 


460  Appendix. 

beg  and  implore  you,  dear  brother,  in  your  piety  and  zeal  to  refute 
these  calumnies,  and  by  means  of  this  letter  publicly  to  brand  them 
as  impious  frauds.  Let  all  know,  especially  those  most  likely  to 
incur  danger  of  being  seduced  and  perverted,  that  the  Catholic 
Church  is  most  dear  to  me,  and  that  I  have  always  and  everywhere 
preached  it  as  the  most  divine  work  of  the  Eternal  Father,  as  the 
true  and  living  body  of  Christ  our  Lord,  God,  and  Saviour ;  as  the 
most  holy  spouse  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  from  whom  she  seeks  her 
strength,  her  invincibility,  and  her  perpetual  ti'iumphs.  The  Cath- 
olic Church  is  to  me  the  only  mediatrix  between  God  and  men,  the 
only  true  dispenser  of  the  mysteries  of  the  Holy  Cross,  so  that  it  ia 
due  to  the  Catholic  Church  alone  if  those  gifts  of  supernatural 
grace  are  never  wanting  to  the  human  race,  with  which  it  not  only 
cannot  absolutely  dispense,  if  we  are  to  retain  the  inheritance 
■which  we  have  acquired  by  the  mystery  of  the  cross,  or  even  in  the 
natural  order  those  good  ends  pleasing  to  God,  to  which  within  the 
limits  of  our  mortality  we  may  lawfully  aspire. 

We  must  on  this  earth  have  the  Catholic  Church  as  a  Mother  if 
we  would  merit  to  have  God  in  heaven  as  our  Father.  Any  man  or 
any  nation  that  desires  its  divine  and  human  vocation  to  be  made 
perfect  and  sanctified  by  the  elements  and  gifts  of  the  supernatural 
order,  must  be  in  connection  with  the  Catholic  Church,  either  im- 
mediately, that  is,  with  its  body  and  soul;  or  at  least  mediately,  that 
is,  with  its  soul.  This  has  been,  is,  and  ever  will  continue  to  be  my 
doctrine  as  to  the  Catholic  Church.  To  her  I  freely  and  with  all 
my  heart  ascribe,  what  St,  Cyprian,  Bishop  of  Carthage  and  Martyr, 
enlightened  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  wrote  in  his  treatise  on  the  Unity 
of  the  Church :  "  The  Church  is  one,  which  is  extended  widely  into 
a  multitude  by  the  fruitf ulness  of  her  growth.  As  the  rays  of  the 
sun  are  many,  but  the  light  one;  and  many  the  branches  of  the 
tree,  but  one  the  trunk  supported  by  a  firm  root ;  and  as  from  one 
fountain  manj'  streams  flow,  and  the  multiplicity  may  seem  im- 
mense in  the  number  of  gushing  branches,  yet  unity  is  preserved  in 
the  origin.  If  a  ray  is  severed  from  the  body  of  the  sun,  the  unity 
of  the  light  receives  no  division;  rend  a  branch  from  a  tree,  the 
fragment  cannot  germinate ;  cut  oflp  a  stream  from  its  source,  the 
severed  stream  dries  up.  Indeed,  it  is  self-appai-ent ;  unity,  con- 
cord, harmony  belong  to  the  essence  and,  as  it  were,  to  the  inmost 
soul  of  Christ;  so  that  where  there  is  unity,  concord,  harmony, 
there  undoubtedly  is  the  Church ;  where  unity,  concord,  harmony 
are  wanting,  there  infallibly  the  Cluu'ch,  too,  for  that  very  reason 
is  wanting.  Unity,  concord,  harmony,  is  the  highest  and  most  evi- 
dent proof  of  the  divinity  of  the  Catholic  Church."  Whatever  the 
holy  Martyr  says  of  the  unity  of  the  Church,  he  says  of  the  Church 


Appendix.  461 

of  God  itself.  The  Catholic  Church  is  then  the  sun,  whose  rays  en- 
lighten all  churches  and  nations  throughout  the  whole  world.  The 
Catholic  Church  is  the  oak,  braced  by  a  sturdy  root;  its  fruit,  all 
those  whom  the  different  churches  and  nations  bring  to  the  salva- 
tion of  eternal  and  temporal  life,  are  due  to  the  fecundity  of  this 
divine  tree  and  trunk. 

The  Catholic  Church  is  the  fountain  of  the  unfailing  river, 
s])ringing  from  eternity  itself,  and  gliding  on  to  eternity  through  the 
whole  series  of  ages,  tilling  all  the  streams  of  the  different  churches 
and  nations  fully  with  the  welling  torrent  of  its  watei-s,  to  an 
inexhaustible  abundance  and  plenty  of  celestial  and  terrestrial 
fecundity.  Moreover,  I  love,  cherish,  and  honor  the  Roman 
Church  as  matrix  and  mistress  of  all  churclies  throughout  the 
world.  To  the  Church  of  Rome  I  do  most  freely  and  with  my  whole 
heart  endoi-se  the  splendid  testimony  of  St.  Irena?us,  Bishop  and 
Martyr,  in  his  work  against  Heresies. 

The  same  saint  (Book  III.,  chap.  iii.  of  tliat  work)  extols  the 
glory  of  the  Roman  Church,  which  he  calls  the  greatest  and  most 
ancient,  founded  by  the  two  most  glorious  apostles,  Peter  and  Paul. 
To  this  Church,  he  says,  on  account  of  its  more  powerful  princi- 
pality, the  whole  Church  must  necessarily  be  united,  that  is,  the 
faithful  who  are  everywhere,  for  in  her  is  ever  preserved,  by  the  faith- 
ful everywhere,  tlie  tradition  derived  from  the  apostles.  Moreover, 
of  the  same  Church  and  in  the  same  work  he  affirms  that  the  apos- 
tles brought  together  into  her,  as  into  a  certain  I'ich  deposit  of  the 
Holy  Ghost,  whatever  truth  there  is.  Often  and  often  do  I  say  to 
myself  a.s  I  regard  these  rights  and  prerogatives  of  the  Roman 
Chureh:  May  God,  merciful  and  patient,  rather  forget  me  and  my 
salvation  than  that  I  should  forget  what  I  owe  to  this  most  glorious 
and  ancient  Church.  May  my  voice  rather  cling  forever  to  my  lips 
and  become  dumb,  may  my  right  hand  rather  wither  than  that  I 
should  utter  or  write  a  word  that  is  not  to  the  praise,  the  honor, 
and  the  glory  of  this  Church.  This  has  been,  is,  and  ever  will  be 
forever  constantly  my  faith,  my  judgment,  my  conviction.  I 
know,  moreover,  and  feel  in  my  heart  tliat  this  right,  privilege,  and 
glory  of  the  Roman  Church  is  due  especially  to  the  Sovereign  Pon- 
tiff, the  successor  of  St.  Peter,  whose  throne  is  fixed  at  Rome  for- 
ever. 

The  Sovereign  Pontiff,  the  successor  of  St.  Peter,  is  the  vicar  on 
this  earth  of  Jesus  Christ  Himself,  our  God  and  Saviour.  He  is  the 
visible  head  of  the  Church,  he  is  the  father  of  his  believers,  he  is 
the  supreme  pastor  of  the  Lord's  flock,  he  is  the  infallible  teacher  of 
all  the  sheep  and  lambs  in  the  Church  of  God.  He  is  the  source 
a."id  eternal  pledge  of  the  unity  of  the  Church,  and  of  the  unity  of  the 


462  Appkndix, 

sacerdotal  order,  so  that,  accorduig  to  St.  Ambrose :  where  Peter  is, 
there  is  the  Church;  and  according  to  St.  Augustine:  Rome  lias 
spoken,  the  case  is  decided.  I  have  ever  adopted  as  my  own  what 
our  St.  Jei-ome  wrote  to  Pope  Damasus  (Ej).  xv.,  Ad  eundem):  "I 
am  united  by  communion  with  your  Holmess,  that  is,  with  the 
chair  of  Peter;  I  know  that  the  Church  is  built  on  that  rock. 
Whoso  eateth  the  lamb  outside  this  house  is  profane.  If  any  one  is 
not  in  the  ark  of  Noah,  he  will  perish  when  the  deluge  holds  sway." 
This  has  been  most  constantly  my  faith,  my  judgment,  and  the  un- 
alterable rule  of  my  life,  which  I  hope  to  bear  whole  and  unsullied  to 
the  very  throne  of  God  as  a  token  of  my  eternal  life  and  salvation. 
Finally,  I  honor  the  present  Sovereign  Pontitf,  the  most  glorious 
Leo  XIII. ,  with  absolutely  filial  piety,  reverence,  obedience,  and  adhe- 
sion, and  if  it  could  be,  I  would  most  willingly  be  totally  united  to 
him,  not  only  in  my  soul  and  heart,  but  also  in  body  and  in  my 
earthly  lot,  to  his  cro.ss  and  chains,  and  to  all  he  suffere,  even  unto 
death,  well  aware  that  I  would  thus  most  completely  become  jmr- 
taker  of  his  praise,  honor,  and  glory. 

All  this,  I  beseech  you,  dear  brother,  publish  ni  your  papers,  and 
confound  my  malignant  slandei-ers.  God  bless  you!  Give  me 
your  attachment,  and  remember  me  in  your  prayers. 

+  Joseph  George,  Bishop. 

Djakovar,  June  18,  1889. 


APPENDIX  C. 


LETTER  FROM  REV.  DR.  LEE  (ANGLICAN),  ON  LITTLE- 
DALE'S  "PLAIN  REASONS." 

A  CRUSniNO  REPLY. — A  PROTESTANT  REFUTES  PROTESTANT 

CALUMNIES. 

"We  publish  this  week  what  we  may  perhaps  best  describe  as  a 
'  smashing '  letter  from  the  Rev.  Frederick  George  Lee,  D.D.,  Yicar 
of  All  Sahits',  Lambeth.  Dr.  Lee,  of  course,  writes  fi-om  his  own 
standpoint,  and  there  are  one  or  two  incidental  remarks  as  to  which 
we  are  likely  to  remain  in  permanent  disagreement  with  him,  but 
nothing  could  well  be  more  effective  tliaii  his  brilliant  and  trench- 
ant exposure  of  the  reckless  carelessness  and  slovenly  scholarship  of 
the  man  who,  with  a  light  heart,  has  set  himself  to  '  criticise  the 
saints,  correct  the  Popes,  and  snub  the  Cardinals.'    Indeed  our  read- 


Al'PKNDIX.  403 

ers  may  even  be  a  little  curious  to  know  what  is  left  of  '  Plain  Rea- 
sons,' when  they  learn  that  for  its  200  pages,  Dr.  Littledale  has 
ah-eady  had  to  make  201  retractions,  and  that  its  latest  edition  con- 
tains a  Preface  with  '  no  less  than  13,340  words  of  errata.'  This  sig- 
nal discomfiture  of  Dr.  Littledale  we  trust  may  {wove  a  lesson  and 
a  warnuig  to  other  rash  assailants  of  the  Church  of  God:'— Londo7i 
Tablet. 
Below  we  give  the  letter  referred  to : — 

AN  ANGLICAN  ON  ANGLICAN  CONTROVERSY. 

gir^ — Certain  generous  and  wise  woixls  which  you  published  on 
November  4th,  1882,  lead  me  to  trouble  you  with  this  letter,  and  to 
ask  you  to  favor  me  by  printing  it. 

ENGLAND'S    MOST  IMMINENT  DANGER. 

Your  woi-ds  stood  thus:  "  Anything  which  tends  to  weaken  the 
influence  of  the  Church  of  England  as  a  teacher  of  those  religious 
truths  which  she,  liowever  imperfectly,  holds  and  proclaims,  appeai-s 
to  us  to  be  matter  of  regret,  as  so  much  gain  to  the  cause  of  secular- 
ity  and  unbelief."  Even  from  your  point  of  view,  in  a  certain 
sense,  the  scaffolding  and  organization  of  the  Established  Church, 
including  moi-e  particularly  baptism  and  marriage,  is  after  the  an- 
cient type,  and  is  inherently  Christian.  It  has  lost  much,  I  know, 
and  its  needs  are  numerous;  our  ancestoi-s  were  betrayed,  robbed, 
hoodwinked,  persecuted  and  defrauded  by  the  Tudoi-s,  and,  as  a 
coiisequence,  religion  itself,  and  England  as  a  nation,  have  griev- 
ously suffered.  Whether,  in  the  future,  the  national  church,  after 
disestablishment  and  disendowment,  will  break  up,  i-emains  to  be 
seen.  If  it  does,  our  beloved  country  will  be  far  on  the  way  to  re- 
verting to  paganism.  And  atheism  subsequently  may  become  very 
powerful,  if  not  dominant,  to  our  great  woe  and  loss,  for  all  of  us. 

WHAT  DR.  LEE  WISHES  TO  SEE  ACCOMPLISHED. 

Surely,  therefore,  to  maintain  and  mend  the  Church  of  England 
without  breaking  it  up,  to  regain  wbat  has  been  lost,  to  restore  it  to 
visible  corporate  communion  with  the  Holy  See  (as  did  Cardinal 
Pole  under  Queen  Mary)  and  not  to  destroy  it,  seems  to  me  the  right 
and  proper  policy  to  adojjt.  I  see  nothing  wj-ong  in  such  a  pi-o- 
gramme  and  plan,  but  everything  Hiat  is  wise  and  good,  righteous 
and  true.  This  being  so,  and  having  been  so  with  myself  for  more 
than  thirty  yeare,  I  rejoiced  when  I  read  your  politic,  sensible,  and 
kindly-expressed  words,  and  often  read  them  anew. 


46-i  Appendix. 

A  GOOD  WORD   FOR   THE  TRACTARIAN  MOVEMENT. 

Everything  tliat  tends  to  remove  the  dark  sliadow  of  polemical 
misrepresentation  from  tlie  minds  of  pati-iotic  EngHshmen  seems  to 
me  distinct  advantage  to  the  country.  Tlie  Tractarian  movement 
not  only  began  this  good  work,  but  steadily  carried  it  on  for  years. 
In  tlie  various  restorations  effected,  malignant,  long-cherished  preju- 
dices have  been  laid  to  rest,  mistakes  admitted,  history  re-written, 
old  trutlis  regained,  zeal  and  self-denial  brought  to  the  forefront. 
In  most  of  our  ancient  Cathedrals,  where  the  Abomination  of  Deso- 
lation was  set  up  by  the  Poynets,  Eidleys,  B  les  and  Aylmei-s  of 
old,  such  beneficent  restorations  have  been  Ci  "ected  as  that  Mass 
miglit  tlierein  be  said  again  with  all  proper  dignity  and  order  at  a 
few  days'  notice.  During  the  last  half  century,  moreover,  nearly 
0,000  new  churches  and  chapels  have  been  built  in  England,  and 
more  than  that  number  of  old  sanctuaries  creditably  restored. 

A  RITUALISTIC    BLUNDER — DR.    LITTLEDALE. 

Now,  just  as  a  breach  of  unity  sealed  divisions,  and  all  kinds  of 
dangerous  and  woi-thless  sects  and  everlasting  wranglings  sprang 
from  the  deplorable  Tudor  changes;  so  ought  peace  and  liarmony 
and  re-union  to  s])ring  from,  and  become  the  direct  and  distinct  out- 
come and  the  final  crown  of  the  Oxford  or  Tractarian  movement— 
evidently  from  God.  Anything  that  tends  to  hinder  such  a  desira- 
ble consummation  is  mischievous,  disastrous,  and  certainly  not  from 
above.  It  is  because  I  feel  very  keenly  that  the  recent  pitiable  pol- 
icy of  the  Ritualists  in  mattei-s  controversial— so  gi-eatly  at  variance 
with  that  of  forty  years  ago— is  both  dangerous  and  disastrous;  and 
tliat  in  several  particulare  this  movement,  in.stead  of  beuig  con- 
structive, is  now  actually  i/e-structive,  that  I  venture  to  assure  you 
that  a  large  portion  of  the  English  clergy— many  of  them  retiring, 
uncontroversial,  and  peace-loving— have  no  sympathy  whatsoever 
with  the  blatant  and  boisterous  noise  of  mere  professional  controver- 
.sialists,  wlio.  with  arrogance  and  art.  but  with  no  responsibility,  are 
doing  their  best  to  render  future  peace  and  unity,  humanly  speak- 
ing, impossible.  No  publication  with  which  I  am  acquainted  has 
been  more  disastrous  in  iis  aim  and  consequences  than  "Plain  Rea- 
sons." published  by  the  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Christian 
Knowledge.  More  than  3.'), 000  copies  have  been  sold,  and  its  read- 
ers, of  couree,  have  been  numerous.  Its  success,  as  a  literary  spec- 
ulation, is  one  of  the  darkest  signs  of  the  times.  Had  we  a  body  o*" 
clergy  with  a  sound  theological  education,  such  a  publication  must 
have  been  met  first  only  with  a  chilling  welcome  from  those  being 
duped,  and  then  with  a  howl  of  execration.  I  will  not  dii-ectly  say 
more  than  that,  having  carefully  examined  it  in  conjunction  with 


Appendix.  -i^o 

others— the  first  edition  was  the  last— we  have  found  it  to  be  merci 
lessly  unfair,  and  altogether  untrustworthy.    I  would  that  we  could 
regard  its  compiler  as  unintentionally  misled  and  mistaken.     The 
book  will  very  possibly  destroy  the  faith  of  many. 

DR.    LITTLED ale's   "CORRECTIONS." 

Now  I  here  ask  you,  sii',  to  note  that,  independent  of  eighteen 
separate  apologetic  letters  sent  from  time  to  time  (from  1880  to  1885) 
to  the  Guardian  and  Church  Times,  each  containing  certain  retrac- 
tions, emendations,  and  corrections  of  mistakes  which  had  been 
pointed  out,  the  author,  in  a  new  edition  of  his  book,  published  in 
1881,  prtiixed  no  less  than  twenty-nine  pages  of  closely  printed  "  ad- 
ditions and  corrections  "  (mainly  the  latter),  each  page  containing 
forty-six  lines,  and  each  line  about  ten  words;  thus  making  no  less 
than  13,340  words  of  errata— a,  somewhat  unprecedented  and  start- 
ling literary  performance,  and  a  remarkable  example  of  original 
slip-slop  and  random  accusation— for  a  person  who,  criticising  the 
saints,  correcting  the  Popes,  and  snubbing  the  Cardinals,  claims  to 
hector  and  teach  other  people,  and  whose  book  in  its  totality  does 
not  extend  to  two  hundred  pages.  Every  f  esh  edition  has  received 
fresh  corrections,  while  in  several  cases  th  corrections  are  equally 
inaccvu*ate  with  the  statements  presumed  tc  be  corrected. 

TABULATED  STATEMENT  OF  CORRIGENDA  AND  ERRATA. 

The  various  errata  and  explanatory  additions  referred  to,  as  can 
be  calculated  and  seen,  amovmt,  I  am  given  to  conclude,  to  exactly 
two  hundred  and  one.  These— which  will  probably  be  set  forth  at 
length  in  a  future  publication— are,  of  course,  of  different  kinds, 
some  more  important  than  others,  and  have  thus  been  carefully  tab- 
ulated by  myself  and  two  friends: 

Corrigenda  and  Errata.— Reg&rdmg  historical  or  traditional 
facts,  51 :  regarding  dogmatic  facts,  historical  and  theological,  43 ; 
regarding  quotations,  either  first  or  second  hand,  from  writers  on 
history  and  canon  law,  with  inaccurate  conclusions  from  uncertain 
premises,  29;  regarding  historical  and  theological  quotations  half 
made,  often  with  certain  remarkable  omissions  or  qualifications,  and 
consequently,  for  purposes  of  controversy,  imperfectly  and  not 
fairly  quoted,  30;  regarding  short  scraps  of  quotations  from  the 
Fathers,  which,  when  souglit  out  and  studied,  are  found  to  bear  an 
entirely  different  meaning  from  that  which,  for  controversial  pur- 
poses, they  were  credited,  24;  moreover,  the  compiler  of  "Plain 
Reasons"  has,  on  no  less  than  seventeen  occasions,  made  mistakes 
in  confusing  the  personal  opinions  of  Catholic  writers  on  dogma, 
canon  law,  or  ecclesiastical  histoid  with  the  defined  and  authorita- 


406  Appendix. 

tive  faith  of  the  Catholic  Church — a  somewhat  serious  series  of  addi- 
tional errata,  17 ;  furtherniore,  in  seven  cases  he  has  assumed  that 
ceriain  current  opinions — highly  prohahle  opinions,  no  doubt,  but 
as  yet  only  opinions — are  without  any  doubt  dogmatic  facts,  sacred 
dogmas,  and  part  of  the  unchangeable  Divine  deposit,  and  has 
argued  accordingly.  This  is  neither  fair  nor  faitliful.  The  "opin- 
ions "  even  of  Popes  or  canonized  saints  are  opinions,  and  nothing 
more.  Such  opinions  are  not  imposed  on  the  faithful,  and  may  be 
distinct  from  the  Catholic  faith,  7.     Total,  201. 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  INTENTION. 

Several  of  the  above  referred  to  corrigenda  and  sub-added  notes 
contain  several  other  retractions,  further  detailed  explanations,  and 
careful  explainings-away  of  grave  n  istakes.  The  artful  and  insin- 
cere criticism  (and  I  must  add  suprt  me  nonsense)  which  is  found 
i"egarding  the  doctrine  of  intention — a  doctrine  as  familiar  to  law  as 
to  theology,  and  as  important  to  one  as  to  the  other  (for  if  good 
faith  were  not  kept  in  ordinary  public  and  official  acts,  where  should 
we  be  ?) — is  so  utterly  puerile  and  ridiculous,  that  it  can  only  take 
in  those  who  are  anxious  to  be  deluded.  If  one  man,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  another,  apparently  executing  a  legal  deed,  deliberately  and 
openly  declares,  ' '  I  do  not  deliver  this  as  my  act  and  deed  " — the 
proper  intention  is  wanting,  and  the  signed  instrument  is  probably 
invalid,  and  certainly  open  to  have  its  value  contested.  So  most 
probably  in  regard  to  an  official  sacramental  act  when  the  general 
intention  has  been  found  to  have  been  absolutely  withheld. 

ADVERSE   PROTESTANT   CRITICISMS   OF   DR.  LITTLEDALE. 

Many  of  the  criticisms  in  question,  though  maintained  with  some 
show  of  learning,  are  accurately  enough  measured  at  their  true 
value  by  those  Anglicans  competent  to  form  an  opinion.  Circum- 
stances have  placed  at  my  disposal  numerous  comments  upon  the 
book  criticised.  I  select  a  few  as  evidence  that  the  new  and  disas- 
trous policy  embodied  in  "  Plain  Reasons  "  is  by  many  repudiated; 
its  method  being  mistrusted,  its  veiy  gross  and  uncharitable  lan- 
guage deplored,  and  its  conclusions  rejected.  I  only  wish  those 
clergymen  in  official  places,  who  are  so  ready  and  even  voluble  to 
condemn  it  in  private,  would  have  the  courage  of  their  opinions  in 
public.  But  this  is  scarcely  a  courageous  age.  Wills  are  too  often 
weak,  and  moral  backbones  either  disjointed  or  broken. 
An  Honorary  Canon  of  Oxfoi*d  Cathedral  writes : 
"  No  long  experience  of  '  Plam  Reasons  '  has  proved  to  me  that 
the  plan  of  appealing  to  mere  reason,  and  bringing  everything  down 
to  its  own  level  in  dealing  with  Romanism,  is  likely  to  be  turned  to 


Api'kndix.  467 

a  deadly  account  in  dealing  with  the  great  doctrines  of  the  Trinify 

and  of  God  manifest  in  the  llesh I  know  two  at  least  whom 

the  book  has  made  first  anti-Roman  and  then  scoffing  infidels." 

Another  clergyman  of  the  Diocese  of  Oxford  writes:  "In  my 
parish  and  neighhorhmxl  it  has  done  more  harm  than  good,  making 
its  readei*s,  in  some  cases,  often  loose  believere,  and  then  Christians 
unattached.  In  others,  it  has  sent  devout  minds,  shocked  by  its 
unpleasant  cynicism,  over  to  Rome." 

Mr.  Shirley  Brabazon,  of  Stoke,  Oxfordshire,  expressed  in  public 
(Uth  of  October,  1881)  the  following  sentiment:  "A  book  w^hich 
lias  been  corrected  in  nearly  a  hundred  cases  of  misstatement, 
should  have  been  fli-st  submitted  to  some  competent  author  .... 
before  being  put  in  print.  It  shakes  our  confidence  in  the  Society 
for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge,  and  it  is  not  creditable  that  no 
expression  of  regret  was  made  by  its  committee  for  the  circulation 
of  errors  and  fictions.  Dishonesty  in  controversy,  especially  in  re- 
ligious controvei-sy,  even  when  resulting  from  want  of  necessary 
inquiry  beforehand,  is  much  to  be  deprecated."' 

Dr.  Mossman,  of  Torrington,  Lincolnshire,  in  1881,  wrote  thus: 
"The  book  appears  to  me  to  be  written  in  a  most  reprehensible 
spirit.  Unless  exposed  and  refuted,  it  is  calculated  to  do  grievous 
harm  to  the  blessed  and  holy  cause  of  coiijorate  reunion.  The  book 
cannot,  of  course,  mislead  any  one  who  is  really  acquainted  with 
ecclesiastical  histoiy  and  dogmatic  theology,  but  how  very  few  of 
its  readers  will  know  that  it  is  little  more  than  a  crude  congeries  of 
fallacies  and  erroneous  statements,  taken  at  second  hand,  which 
have  been  exposed  and  refuted  again  and  again." 

Another  clergyman,  of  the  Diocese  of  Salisbury,  writes:  "I  am 
not  prepared  to  face  the  malice  and  nxalevolence  of  (a  certain  relig- 
ious newspaper),  otherwise  I  could  easily  point  out  a  score  of  mis- 
takes and  misrepresentations  (in  '  Plain  Reasons ')  as  to  our  rela- 
tions with  the  saints  in  glory — their  help,  our  duty." 

A  Rector  in  Kent,  in  a  published  letter  in  1882,  put  on  record  his 
judgment,  as  follows:  "  That  such  a  book  should  be  issued  at  all  by 
the  Society  for  Promoting  Christian  Knowledge  is  a  sign  of  deteri- 
oration, and  a  bad  sign.  too.  For  to  di'ive  more  wedges  into  the 
breach  between  us  and  Rome,  and  to  make  it  bigger  and  wider,  is 
not  to  my  mind  the  work  of  a  Catholic  (?)  priest,  now  that  irreligion, 
imbelief,  and  profanity  are  extending  so." 

The  Rev.  Wentworth  Hankey,  of  Christ  Chureh,  Oxford,  in  Au- 
gust, 1881,  wrote  thus:  "  I  shall  be  much  obliged,  if  you  will  allow 
nie.as  an  Anglican  clergj^man,  who  prefers  Dr.  Littledale's  past  to  his 
present  views,  to  express  the  shame  and  irdignation  with  which  I 
fiavo  from  the  first  regarded  the  publication  of   'Plain   Reasons.' 


463  Appendix. 

Since  the  iasue  of  translations  into  French  and  Italian,  the  claim  of 
the  work  to  be  defensive  and  not  aggressive  can  no  longer  be  sus- 
tainecl;  and  considering  what  manner  of  men  are  the  vast  majority 
of  the  Church's  ejieniies  in  France  and  Italy,  I  protest  in  the  name 
of  our  common  Christianity  against  any  such  attempt  to  weaken  the 
liands  of  the  Church." 

HANDUNG  DR.  LITTLEDALE  "WITHOUT  GLOVES." 

The  Rev.  E.  W.  Gilliam  remarked  of  its  author's  controversial 
wi'itiiigs  that  they  are  "so  evidently  dictated  by  ill-feeling  and  prej- 
udice, and  the  i-ules  of  good  breeding  are  so  completely  ignored  by 
him,  that  a  reader  of  any  refinement  of  mind  instinctively  draws 
back  fi-om  one  who  seems  thus  regardless  of  the  first  principles  of 
Christian  moderation  and  oi-dinary  charity."  Adding,  with  much 
force  and  terseness  of  "Plain  Reasons":  "Entii-ely  negative  in 
character,  it  is,  moreover,  a  coarse,  vituperative,  bruUil  book,  with- 
out piety  and  without  justice — a  book  whose  spirit  has  nothing  in 
common  with  a  holy  and  upright  mind." 

I  am  informed  by  persons  who  know  them  that  Canon  Liddon, 
Canon  Carter,  Bishop  King,  Prebendary  West  of  Lincoln,  Mr.  R.  M. 
Benson  of  Cowley,  Mr.  Chancellor  Wagner,  and  others,  have  ex- 
pressed their  dislike  of  the  methods,  assertions,  and  style  of  reason- 
ing of  "  Plain  Reasons,"  in  terms  more  or  less  in  harmony  with  the 
various  sentiments  just  quoted. 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION. 

To  return  to  the  Ixwk  itself.  As  regards  the  important  doctrine 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception,  which  has  always  been  held  by  the 
Catholic  Chureh,  it  is  perfectly  certain  the  first  Bishop  of  Norwich, 
Herbert  de  Losinga  (1050-1119)  taught  it  as  a  matter  of  course, 
openly  and  publicly,  with  the  greatest  distinctness.  Here  are  words 
— a  strong  contrast  to  the  confu.sed  sentiments  and  distressing  pro- 
fanity of  certain  preachers  at  Oxford  thirty-five  years  ago — taken 
from  one  of  Bishop  de  Losinga's  sermons:  "She,  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
was  made  white  with  many  virtues  and  merits;  yea,  whiter  than 
the  driven  snow  was  she  made  by  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  and 
showed  forth  in  all  things  the  simplicity  of  the  dove,  since  whatever 
was  done  in  her  was  all  purity  and  simplicity,  was  all  pure  grace, 
was  all  the  merey  and  justice  which  looked  down  from  heaven. 
And  therefore  is  she  called  Undeflled  {et  ideo  immaculata)  because 
in  notlung  was  she  corrupt  (quia  in  nullo  conmpta).'' — Vol.  ii., 
p.  349.' 

'  Life  and  Letters  of  Herbert  de  Losinga,  Blsliop  of  Norwich.  By  E.  M. 
Goull)onie,  Dean,  and  Henry  Symonds,  M.A.,  Precentor  of  Norwich  Cathedral. 
In  two  volumes.    London  :  1878. 


Appendix.  4G9 

THE  ABStrMPTlON  AND   INVOCATION  OP  SAINTS. 

And  the  following  beautiful  passage  relates  to  the  dogmatic  fact 
of  the  Assumption,  and  to  the  consoling  and  sustaining  doctrine  of 
the  Invocation  of  Saints:  "To-day  the  Most  Blessed  Virgin 
Mary  was  taken  up  above  the  heavens,  and  in  the  presence  of  the 
Holy  Apostles  her  body  was  placed  in  the  sepulchre.  She  dietl,  but 
a  body  of  such  excellent  dignity  could  not  (as  Blessed  Gregory  saith) 
•  long  be  held  in  the  bonds  of  death.  For  it  was  impossible  that  the 
flesh  should  be  corrupted  by  a  long  death  of  which  the  Word  was 
made  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us.  For  if  at  the  Lord's  resurrec- 
tion many  bodies  of  the  saints  that  slept  arose,  how  could  tliat  flesh 
not  rise  again  which  gave  birth  to  the  Author  of  life  Himself  ? 
With  a  full  and  undoubting  faith,  believe  ye,  my  brethren,  that  the 
Most  Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  made  immortal,  both  in  body  and  soul, 
sitteth  at  the  right  hand  of  Gkxl,  with  her  Son,  our  LoH  Jesus  Christ, 
being  the  mother  of  penitents,  and  the  most  efl'ectual  intercessor  for 
our  sins  with  her  most  gracious  Son." — Vol.  ii.,  pp.  351,  352. 

BASELESS  AND  PROFANE  CHARGES. 

With  regard  to  what  is  set  forth  in  "  Plain  Reasons"  concerning 
Church  law,  the  maxims  of  Ferraris  and  other  canonists  quoted  are 
no  more  infallible,  as  is  practically  assumed,  than  are  the  personal 
opinions  of  Sir  Robert  Phillimore  and  Sir  Ednmnd  Beckett  equiva- 
lent to  our  authoritative  declaration  of  what  is  the  present  law  of 
the  Established  Church.  The  charges  of  "accumulated  falsehood," 
of  "entire  disregaixi  for  truth,"  of  "deliberate  and  conscious  false- 
hood with  fraudulent  intent,"  and  that  "truth  pure  and  simple  is 
almost  never  to  be  found,  and  the  whole  truth  in  no  case  whatever, " 
in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  are  statements  exceedingly  shock- 
ing, and  in  most  cases  have  the  exactly  opposite  effect  intended. 
Such  vague  charges  are  incapable  of  being  met,  for  they  are  baseless 
1  as  they  are  profane.  In  one  case  this  accuser  of  his  brethren  goes 
so  far  as  to  deliberately  charge  Baronius  with  purposely  altering  a 
date,  and  of  deliberately  falsifying  the  Roman  martyrology  for  cer- 
tain controversial  purposes.  Now,  any  historian  is  liable  to  a  chro- 
nological error  ;  yet  no  certain  evidence  of  the  accuracy  oi  the  grave 
charge  in  question  exists  ;  while  a  writer  who  has  himself  made  no 
less  than  two  hundred  retractions  or  explanations  in  a  hastily  com- 
piled book  of  two  hundred  pages,  should  not  (without  any  hearing 
or  defense)  be  severe  upon  a  Christian  hero  who  may  possibly  have 
made  one  in  two  thousand. 

BROUGHT  TO  TASK  BY  A  GREEK. 

Dr.  Littledale's  treatment  of  the  Seventh  CEcumenical  Council 
and  its  decrees  has  brought  down  upon  him  a  sconiful  and  wither- 


470  Atpendix. 

ing  criticism  by  Professor  Damalas  of  Mount  Athos,  referred  to  in  a 
recent  number  of  a  German  literary  serial,  which  I  have  not  seen, 
but  which  a  learned  Anglican  friend  informs  me  is  painful  to  read, 
and  quite  impossible  to  answer. 

THE  CONSEQUENCES  OP  DR.  LITTLEDALE'S  METHOD. 

In  fine,  only  let  the  Sacred  doctrines  of  the  Blessed  Trinity,  of  the 
Procession  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  the  Incarnation,  of  the  Two  Wills 
of  our  Blessed  Saviour,  of  the  Sacraments  and  of  the  Episcopate,  be 
treated  in  a  like  carping  and  rationalistic  method  with  which  the 
writer  of  "Plain  Reasons"  has  dealt  with  the  need  of  a  Visible 
Head  to  a  Visible  Church,  and  the  exercise  by  delegation  of  our 
Lord's  Univei-sal  Sovereignty,  and  the  mischief  of  the  method  would 
be  apparent.  Furthermore,  devotion  to  and  invocation  of  the 
saints,  which  of  course  is  only  the  "communion  of  saints  "  (in  which 
all  profess  to  believe)  put  itito  practice,  the  state  of  the  faithful  de- 
parted, the  Immaculate  Conception  and  Assumption  of  our  Blessed 
Lady,  would  by  a  like  rationalistic  and  destructive  method,  l)e 
swept  away.  The  Catholic  faith,  however,  is  like  a  perfect  and 
complete  arch.  If  but  one  stone  bo  removed  and  several  others  be 
painstakingly  battered  and  intentionally  broken,  there  is  a  grave 
danger  that  the  whole  archway  may  fall. 

DR.   LEE  AGAIN  EXPRESSES  HIS  OREAT  HOPE. 

I  conclude,  therefore,  that  for  more  than  three  and  a  half  cen- 
turies in  England  destruction,  protests,  negations,  bitter  controver- 
sies, and  self-pleasing  have  done  more  than  enough  evil  and  mis- 
chievous work ;  and  that  the  Established  Church,  now  confrontetl 
by  indiflFerence,  atheism,  sectarian  spite,  and  avowed  Agnosticism — 
can  only  retain  its  present  position,  or  be  proved  to  be  worth  its 
salt,  by  its  leaders  and  officials  making  a  zealous  endeavor  to  re- 
store what  is  wanting,  and  to  secure  from  ecclesiastical  authority 
in  the  face  of  Christendom  a  restoration  of  what  has  lapsed  and 
been  lost — the  original  scheme,  so  far  as  there  was  one,  of  NewTnan 
and  Pusey,  of  Manning,  Keble,  Froude,  and  Ward.  By  this  means 
all  Cliristians— like  animals  when  attacked  by  a  common  foe — 
might  at  f'rst  be  led  in  mere  self-defence  to  herd  together,  and  then, 
under  supreme  authority,  to  act  together  for  the  honor  of  God,  the 
extension  of  the  Catholic  faith,  and  the  advantage  of  Christendom. 
In  this  hope,  I  subscribe  myself,  sir,  your  obedient  and  obliged 
servant, 

Frederick  George  Lee,  D.D. 

All  Saints'  Vicarage,  Lambeth,  S.  E.,  Rogation  Sunday,  1886. 


Appendix.  471 

APPENDIX   D. 

When  I  asserted  in  the  text,  that  to  De  Rossi's  Cathohc  mind 
there  was  no  doctrinal  difference  between  the  three  readinjpn^,  Ipse, 
Ipsa,  Ipsum,  I  had  before  nie  only  the  extract  from  his  great  work 
given  by  Pusey,  and  I  relied  entirely  upon  my  Catholic  mstinct  in 
the  matter.  It  has  not  deceived  me.  I  have  since  examined  the 
work  itself,  and  it  confirms  every  statement  I  have  made.  De  Rossi 
translates  the  Hebrew  by  Ipsum,  but  he  agrees  with  Lucas  Brugen- 
sis  that  Ipsa  is  not  opposed  to  the  Hebrew  in  sense,  and  he  adds  the 
testimony  of  the  learned  Father  Bukentop  to  the  Catholic  meanmg 
of  Ipsa  in  these  words:  Idem  repetit  Bukentopius  addensdici  posse 
Ipsa,  sicut  Oen.  xii.  3,  dicitur  in  te  benedicentur  universal  cogna- 
Hones  terroe,  id  est  iti  semine  tuo,  ut  Deus  ipse  explicat  Oen.  xxii. 
18."  De  Rossi  here  refers  to  Buken top's  work— Ltu?  de  luce,  writ- 
ten in  reply  to  James'  Bellum  Papale.  I  have  given  the  words  of 
Lucas  Brugensis  in  the  "Postscript"  to  the  fourth  letter  of  the 
Eejoinder. 


APPENDIX  E 


In  the  Twenty-eighth  letter  I  refer  to  Maimonides  and  his  book 
entitled  The  Guide  of  the  Perplexed.  I  state  that  it  was  written  in 
Arabic  and  afterwards  translated  into  Hebrew  by  himself.  This  I 
desire  to  correct.  From  Friedlander's  translation  of  The  Guide  of 
the  Perplexed  I  find  that  it  was  composed  in  Arabic  and  written  in 
Hebrew  characters.  Subsequently  it  was  translated  into  Hebrew 
by  Rabbi  Samu6i  Ibn  "Vibboii,  m  the  ;Iif<^ti*ne  p*  Maimonides,  who 
was  consulted  by  ihe.  t^nsJaW  On  all  ditatiiit  pa.s£ages. 


ERRATA, 


I'age  132,  line  11,  insert  a  period  after  "St.  (ireyory." 

"  VM),    "     18  Ironi  botUini, 

•'  144,    "      7. 

"  14o,  noti", 

"  171,  line    (i  from  hottoni, 


2.-)0. 

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insert  with. 

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after  '"  Ihuit " 

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De  Hoissi's  nu 

aniii^ 

Is  (liseusseci 

, refer  to  Appendix  1) 

